Zlatko

“Cowperwood, who saw things in the large, could scarcely endure this minutae. He was but little
interested in the affairs of bygone men and women, being so intensely engaged with the living present.
And after a time he slipped outside, preferring the wide sweep of gardens, with their flower-lined
walks and views of the cathedral. Its arches and towers and stained-glass windows, this whole
carefully executed shrine, still held glamor, but all because of the hands and brains, aspirations and
dreams of selfish and self-preserving creatures like himself. And so many of these, as he now mused,
walking about, had warred over possession of this church. And now they were within its walls,
graced and made respectable, the noble dead! Was any man noble? Had there ever been such a thing
as an indubitably noble soul? He was scarcely prepared to believe it. Men killed to live—all of them
—and wallowed in lust in order to reproduce themselves. In fact, wars, vanities, pretenses, cruelties,
greeds, lusts, murder, spelled their true history, with only the weak running to a mythical saviour or
god for aid. And the strong using this belief in a god to further the conquest of the weak. And by such
temples or shrines as this. He looked, meditated, and was somehow touched with the futility of so”
― Theodore Dreiser