"When men stop believing in God, it isn't that they then believe in nothing: they believe in everything."
"The monkish vows keep us far from that sink of vice that is the female body, but often they bring us close to other errors. Can I finally hide from myself the fact that even today my old age is still stirred by the noonday demon when my eyes, in choir, happen to linger on the beardless face of a novice, pure and fresh as a maidens?"
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Source: Umberto Eco (2014). “The Name of the Rose”, p.147, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
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