Devout Buddhists believe in sonam — an accounting of righteous deeds that, when large enough, enables one to escape the cycle of birth and rebirth an… - Jon Krakauer

The religious literature handed out by the earnest young missionaries in Temple Square makes no mention of the fact that Joseph Smith — still the religion's focal personage — married at least thirty-three women and probably as many as forty-eight. Nor does it mention that the youngest of these wives was just fourteen years old when Joseph explained to her that God had commanded that she marry him or face eternal damnation.

The urge to catalog the myriad blunders in order to “learn from the mistakes” is for the most part an exercise in denial and self-deception.

What distinguishes that summit above the earthly line, is that it is unhandselled, awful, grand. It can never become familiar; you are lost the moment you set foot there. You know the path, but wander, thrilled, over the bare and pathless rock, as if it were solidified air and cloud. That rocky, misty summit, secreted in the clouds, was far more thrillingly awful and sublime than the crater of a volcano spouting fire (HENRY DAVID THOREAU, JOURNAL)