Pain and wrong and death must be fairly met and overcome in higher excitement, or else their sting remains essentially unbroken. If one has ever taken the fact of the prevalence of tragic death in this world's history fairly into his mind - freezing, drowning, entombment alive, wild beasts, worse men, and hideous diseases - he can with difficulty continue his own career of worldly prosperity without suspecting that he may all the while not be really inside the game, that he may lack the great initiation.

This is exactly what asceticism thinks; and it voluntarily takes the initiation. Life is neither farce nor genteel comedy, it says, but something we must sit at in mourning garments, hoping its bitter taste will purge us of our folly.

The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James