Melancholy and Religion

"I too, breaking out of old ways, had discovered solitude and the melancholy which is at the basis of religion. Religion turns that melancholy into uplifting fear and hope. But I had rejected the ways and comforts of religion; I couldn't turn to them again, just like that. That melancholy about the world remained something I had to put up with my own. At some times it was sharp; at some times it wasn't there."

V.S. Naipaul, A Bend in the River p.118