I Think That Once You've Produced A

Civilization - A Heap Of Rubble Scavenged By Scrawny English Lit. Vultures.

The Greatest Artists, Saints, Philosophers, And, Until Quite Recent Times, Scientists... Have All Assumed That The New Testament Promise Of Eternal Life Is Valid.... I'd Rather Be Wrong With Dante And Shakespeare And Milton, With Augustine Of Hippo And Francis Of Assisi, With Dr. Johnson, Blake, And Dostoevsky Than Right With Voltaire, Rousseau, The Huxleys, Herbert Spencer, H. G. Wells, And Bernard Shaw.

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.

The Price You Pay For Being Powerful And Being Rich Is To Be Hated.

When The Devil Makes His Offer (always Open Incidentally) Of The Kingdoms Of The Earth, It Is The Bordellos Which Glow So Alluringly To Most Of Us, Not The Banks And The Counting-houses And The Snow-swept Corridors Of Power . . . Sex Is The Mysticism Of A Materialistic Society - In The Beginning Was The Flesh, And The Flesh Became Word; With Its Own Mysteries - This Is My Birth Pill; Swallow It In Remembrance Of Me! - And Its Own Sacred Texts And Scriptures - The Erotica Which Fall Like Black Atomic Rain On The Just And Unjust Alike, Drenching Us, Stupefying Us. To Be Carnally Minded Is Life!