In Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice Caroline says to Mr Bingley,

I should like balls infinitely better, if they were carried on in a different manner; but there is something insufferably tedious in the usual process of such a meeting. It would surely be much more rational if conversation instead of dancing were made the order of the day.’

‘Much more rational, my dear Caroline, I dare say, but it would not be near so much like a ball.”

There is the proper reply to the sophomoric atheist who says that religion is “irrational.” Religion could be more rational if it were more like a philosophy lecture–but then it would not be near so much like a religion. Read more.