“I believe in the Supreme Being, in a Creator whatever he may be. I care little who has placed us here below to fulfill our duties as citizens and parents; but I don’t need to go to a church to kiss silver plates and fatten, out of my pocket, a lot of good-for-nothings who live better than we do. For one can know him as well in a wood, in a field, or even contemplating the ethereal heavens like the ancients. My God is the God of Socrates, of Franklin or Voltaire, and of Béranger. And I can’t admit of an old boy of a God who takes walks in his garden with a cane in his hand, who lodges his friends in the belly of whales, dies uttering a cry, and rises again at the end of three days; things absurd in themselves, and completely opposed, moreover, to all physical laws, which proves to us, by the way, that priests have always wallowed in squalid ignorance, and tried to drag the whole nations down after them.”
“Madame Bovary”, Gustave Flaubert,1857
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