"The white-robed harp-playing heaven of our sabbath-schools [are] lubberlands, pure and simple, one and all… To our crepuscular natures, born for the conflict… such pictures of light upon light are vacuous and expressionless, and neither to be enjoyed nor understood. If this be the whole fruit of the victory, we say; if the generations of mankind suffered and laid down their lives; if prophets confessed and martyrs sang in the fire, and all the sacred tears were shed for no other end than that a race of cratures of such unexampled insipidity should succeed, and protract in saecula saeculorum their contented and inoffensive lives,—why, at such a rate, better lose than win the battle, or at all events better ring down the curtain before the last act of the play, so that a business that began so importantly may be saved from so singularly flat a winding-up[!]"
—William James, "The Dilemma of Determinism"
I find this statement hilarious, and think it rings quite true.