Do I Grow Cleverer With Age, Or

A Curious Reversal In The Locus Of Moral Concern Has Taken Place: People Feel Responsible For Everything Except For What They Do.

It Is Only By Having Desire Thwarted, And Thereby Learning To Control It — In Other Words, By Becoming Civilized — That Men Become Fully Human.

How Many People Does Each Of Us Know Who Claim To Seek Happiness But Freely Choose Paths Inevitably Leading To Misery?

The Loss Of The Religious Understanding Of The Human Condition—that Man Is A Fallen Creature For Whom Virtue Is Necessary But Never Fully Attainable—is A Loss, Not A Gain, In True Sophistication. The Secular Substitute—the Belief In The Perfection Of Life On Earth By The Endless Extension Of A Choice Of Pleasures—is Not Merely Callow By Comparison But Much Less Realistic In Its Understanding Of Human Nature.

Nonjudgmentalism Is Not Really Nonjudgmental. It Is The Judgment That . . . Everything Is The Same, Nothing Is Better. This Is As Barbaric And Untruthful A Doctrine As Has Yet Emerged From The Fertile Mind Of Man.