Mediocrity leads no theological life whatsoever.

Thomas Mann. Doctor Faustus. John E. Woods (trad). Vintage International: Nova Yorque (1999)

I: " [...] You depend upon my pride's preventing me from the remorse necessary to salvation, yet do not make account of there being a prideful remorse — that of Cain, who was of the fast opinion that his sin was greater than could e'er be forgiven him. Contritio without hope and as utter unbelief in the possibility of grace and forgiveness, as the sinner's deep-rooted conviction that he has behaved too grossly and that even unending goodness will not suffice to forgive his sins — only that is the true remorse, and I would remember you that it is to redemption most proximate, to goodness most irresistible. You will admit that grace can have only a workday concern for the workaday sinner. In his case the act of grace has little impulsion, is but a dull enterprise. Mediocrity leads no theological life whatsoever. A sinfulness so hopeless that it allows its man fundamentally to despair of hope is the true theological path to salvation." 

He: "Sly cap! And where will the likes of you find the simpleness, the naive candour of despair that were the presumption for this hopeless path to salvation? Is it not clear to you that purposed speculation on the charm that great guilt exercises upon goodness renders the very act of its grace utterly impossible?" 

I: "And yet it is only by means of this non plus ultra that one arrives at the highest enhancement of dramatically theological existence, which is to say: at the most reprobate guilt and, through it, at the last and irresistible provocation of infinite goodness." 

He: "Not bad. Truly ingenious. And now I shall tell you that precisely minds of your sort constitute the population of hell. It is not so easy to enter into hell; we would long since suffer a want of space if every Tom and Tib were let in. But your theological type, such an arrant desperado who speculates upon speculation, because speculation is in his blood from his father's side — if he were not the Devil's, why 'twould surely be old craft."