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"I often pestered him with religion, but here the fog was thickest of all. To the question, What am I to do in this sense? he replied in the stupidest way, as to a little boy: 'You must believe in God, my dear.'

"'Well, and what if I don't believe in all that?' I at once cried in irritation.

"'Splendid, my dear.'

"'How, splendid?'

"'A most excellent sign, my friend; even the most trustworthy, because our Russian atheist, if only he's a true atheist and has a bit of intelligence, is the best man in the whole world and always inclined to treat God nicely, because he's unfailingly kind, and he's kind because he's immeasurably pleased that he's an atheist. Our atheists are respectable people and trustworthy in the highest degree, the support, so to speak, of the fatherland...'"

--An exchange between Arkady Makarovich Dolgoruky and Makar Ivanovich Dolgoruky in Fyodor Dostoevsky's The Adolescent