Year of Wonders

by Geraldine Brooks
p. 28
"You don't blame her for choosing a living of lustfulness and debauchery?" he inquired, his eyebrow raised in ock severity.
"May be I might," I replied. "But before I blamed, I would like to know the extent of her choices in the hard world that yo have described to me. If yo are drowning in a sewer, your first concern might be that you are drowning, not how vile you smell."

p. 29 I told him then that I had had it directly from our rector that knowledge is not itself evil, it is only the use to which one puts it that may imperil the soul.

This book is soo good. I need to read it again.