In his essay, "Am I A Christian?":
"You have in a small area of the world [the US] an economic system which only works in so far as it constantly increases its gross national product. This is our golden calf, and year by year it must get bigger. In order that its getting bigger shouldn't create chaos, people must constantly consume more and want more, so that we must dedicate some of our most brilliant talents and a huge proportion of our wealth to making them want what they don't want... At the same time, while this is going on in one part of the world, in another part of the world, people are getting poorer and poorer and hungrier and hungrier."
In his eulogy, "Dr. Johnson Looks Heavenward":
"[Dr. Johnson says] I have neither mother to be delighted with the reputation of her son, nor wife to partake in the honours of her husband. I have outlived my friends and my rivals... Youth is delighted with applause, because it is considered as the earnest of some future good, and because the prospect of life is far extended: but to me, who am now declining to decrepitude, there is little to be feared from the malevolence of men, and yet less to be hoped from their affection or esteem... Riches would now be useless, and high employment would be pain. My retrospect of life recalls to my view many opportunities of good neglected, much time squandered upon trifles, and more lost in idleness and vacancy. I leave many great designs unattempted, and many great attempts unfinished. My mind is burdened with no heavy crime, and therefore I compose myself to tranquility; endeavor to abstract my thoughts from hopes and cares, which, though reason knows them to be vain, still try to keep their old possession of the heart; expect, with serene humility, that hour which nature cannot long delay; and hope to possess, in a better state, that happiness which here I could not find, and that virtue which here I have not attained."
In his essay, "On Humanae Vitae":
"When you are old there is something that happens that I find very delightful. You often wake up about half past two or three in the morning when the world is very quiet and, in a way, very beautiful. And you feel half in and half out of your body. As though it is really a toss-up whether you go back into that battered old carcase that you can actually see between the sheets, or make off to where you see in the sky, as it were, like the glow of a distant city...
You are aware of these two things: of the old battered carcase of your life in it and this wonderful making off. And at moment, in the sort of limbo between the two, you have an extraordinarily clear perception of life... what you realize with a certainty and a sharpness... is how extraordinarily beautiful the world is; how wonderful is the privilege of being allowed to live in it... of how beautiful the shapes and sounds and colours of the world are; of how beautiful is human love and human work, and all the joys of being a man or woman in the world... that as a creature, an infinitesimal part of God's creation, you participate in God's purposes for his creation. And that whatever may happen, whatever men may do or not do... those purposes of God are loving and not hating. Are creative and not destructive. Are universal and not particular. And in that awareness, great comfort and great joy."
Currently watching : The Queen (2006)
1 comment:
I so appreciated these quotes, particularly the first. It depicts our times exactly and certainly makes one ponder the "backwardness" of our culture.
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