Get Cynical

I’m back. We’ll return to your regularly scheduled blogging at some point tomorrow. And a short anecdote about the perils of flying standby…. *shiver*

And then I read Shakespeare, the plays, the sonnets, the poems
– read all. I beheld a new heaven and a new earth; Shakespeare,
who knew the brain and heart of man — the hopes and fears, the
loves and hatreds, the vices and the virtues of the human race:
whose imagination read the tear-blurred records, the blood-stained
pages of all the past, and saw falling athwart the outspread scroll
the light of hope and love; Shakespeare, who sounded every depth –
while on the loftiest peak there fell the shadow of his wings.

I compared the Plays with the “inspired” books — Romeo and
Juliet with the Song of Solomon, Lear with Job, and the Sonnets
with the Psalms, and I found that Jehovah did not understand the
art of speech. I compared Shakespeare’s women — his perfect women
– with the women of the Bible. I found that Jehovah was not a
sculptor, not a painter — not an artist — that he lacked the
power that changes clay to flesh — the art, the plastic touch,
that molds the perfect form — the breath that gives it free and
joyous life — the genius that creates the faultless.

The sacred books of all the world are worthless dross and
common stones compared with Shakespeare’s glittering gold and
gleaming gems.

Robert Green Ingersoll – “Why I Am An Agnostic”