Bernard Groethuysen Quote

Gradually disbelief became respectable. It acquired a moral character. By the mere fact that it was an integral part of the consciousness of a class—of the bourgeoisie—it became bourgeois. From an individual phenomenon, or a phenomenon confined to certain isolated groups, it became an expression of collective life.

p. 24 - The Bourgeois: Catholicism vs. Capitalism in Eighteenth-Century France (1927)