“He that grows old without religious hopes, as he declines into imbecility, and feels pains and sorrows incessantly crowding upon him, falls into a gulf of bottomless misery, in which every reflection must plunge him deeper, and where he finds only new gradations of anguish and precipices of horror.”
Samuel Johnson, The Rambler, No. 69 (November 13, 1750, courtesy of Patrick Kurp)