The only ultimate disaster that can befall us is to feel ourselves at home on this earth.

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

History will see advertising as one of the real evil things of our time. It is stimulating people constantly to want things, want this, want that.

The English have this extraordianry respect for longevity. The best example of this was Queen Victoria, a most unpleasant woman who achieved a sort of public affection simply by living to be an enormous age.

Christianity . . . sees the necessity for man to have spiritual values and it shows him how to get at those through physical sacraments.

It is only possible to succeed at second-rate pursuits - like becoming a millionaire or a prime minister, winning a war, seducing beautiful women, flying through the stratosphere, or landing on the moon. First-rate pursuits - involving, as they must, trying to understand what life is about and trying to convey that understanding - inevitably result in a sense of failure. A Napoleon, a Churchill, or a Roosevelt can feel himself to be successful, but never a Socrates, a Pascal, or a Blake. Understanding is forever unattainable.

Politicians get their power too late, and I think that he has inherited an impossible situation in which he is ill-equipped to deal.