Malcolm Muggeridge

“When a man is actually with God, and then sees what he has tried to do and in our terms done so marvellously. it amounts to something which is utterly inadequate. That's what I'm saying: that the steeple reaching up so far, far away, that Salisbury Cathedral has a beautiful steeple, but what is it compared with the sky into which it is reaching? It is in this comparison that one is aware of on the one hand the absurdity of our efforts, and on the other the inadequacy of them”

“If I get to Heaven, which I very much doubt, I will ask of God just one thing, and that is to send Shakespeare back down to earth, and make him sit a University of Madras examination in Shakespeare, just for the pleasure of watching him failing the exam.”

“The first thing I remember about the world — and I pray that it may be the last — is that I was a stranger in it. This feeling, which everyone has in some degree, and which is, at once, the glory and desolation of homo sapiens, provides the only thread of consistency that I can detect in my life.”

“The only ultimate disaster that can befall us, I have come to realise, is to feel ourselves to be at home here on earth.”

“late news was suicide of Jan Masaryk - In my view, Jan Masaryk was thoroughly corrupt, who bumped himself off because he saw at last where his moral cowardice and ideological 'Playboyery' had led him. I vividly remember visiting him in Washington, fat, slightly tight, coming into the room looking like a broken-down butler with his master, the little Communist, Clementis, [-] and saying in a loud voice -'Has anyone seen an Iron Curtain? I haven't.' Well, he has now.”

“Every happening, great and small, is a parable whereby God speaks to us, and the art of life is to get the message.”

“Few men of action have been able to make a graceful exit at the appropriate time.”

“[Have you ever visited the factory farms?] Well, I have seen them. I've seen the chicken ones, which are quite horrifying. And I have put my head in others. But the whole thing nauseates me more than I can tell you. To see meat produced in that way made it impossible for me to eat meat.”

“I think that if men treat animals badly, they will almost certainly treat human beings badly in due course.”

“I think that on the whole man would be living a more natural life if he were a vegetarian.”

“One of the many pleasures of old age is giving things up.”

“Bad humor is an evasion of reality; good humor is an acceptance of it.”

“Every happening, great and small, is a parable whereby God speaks to us, and the art of life is to get the message.”

“There is no such thing as darkness; only a failure to see.”

“Every happening, great and small, is a parable whereby God speaks to us, and the art of life is to get the message.”