This Life In Us; However Low It

Old Politicians, Like Old Actors, Revive In The Limelight. The Vacancy Which Afflicts Them In Private Momentarily Lifts When, Oncemore, They Feel The Eyes Of An Audience Upon Them. Their Old Passion For Holding The Centre Of The Stage Guides Their Uncertain Footsteps To Where The Footlights Shine, And Summons Up A Wintry Smile When The Curtain Rises.

The Essential Feature, And Necessity Of Life Is To Know Reality, Which Means Knowing God.

When I Look Back On My Life Nowadays, Which I Sometimes Do, What Strikes Me Most Forcibly About It Is That What Seemed At The Time Most Significant And Seductive, Seems Now Most Futile And Absurd. For Instance, Success In All Of Its Various Guises; Being Known And Being Praised; Ostensible Pleasures, Like Acquiring Money Or Seducing Women, Or Traveling, Going To And Fro In The World And Up And Down In It Like Satan, Exploring And Experiencing Whatever Vanity Fair Has To Offer. In Retrospect All These Exercises In Self-gratification Seem Pure Fantasy, What Pascal Called “licking The Earth.

Like A Prisoner Awaiting His Release, Like A Schoolboy When The End Of Term Is Near, Like A Migrant Bird Ready To Fly South ... I Long To Be Gone.

I Think That Once You've Produced A Conformist, A Totally Conformist Society, A Society In Which There Were No Critics, That Would In Fact Be An Exact Equivalent Of The Totalitarian Societies Against Which We Are Supposed To Be Fighting In A Cold War.