Malcolm Muggeridge Quotes

I think it's one of the scars in our culture that we have too high an opinion of ourselves. We align ourselves with the angels instead of the higher primates.

Parading our own brilliance and exulting in other people's errors is not very nice. For that matter, even wanting to parade our own brilliance and exult in other people's errors is not very nice, although it is certainly very human.

There is a pride, a self-love, in human minds that will seldom be kept so low as to make men and women humbler than they ought to be.

I'm not great enough to be humble.

Almost all the moral good which is left among us is the apparent effect of physical evil.

O world, how apt the poor are to be proud!

Small things make base men proud.

it is so difficult not to become vain about one's own good luck.

Good and evil exist only in terms of the happiness or suffering they create in ourselves and others

Man is not meant to be humble, he’s meant to be humbled.

Those who would extirpate evil from the world know little of human nature. As well might punch be palatable without souring as existence agreeable without care.

The world is a den of thieves, and night is falling. Evil breaks its chains and runs through the world like a mad dog. The poison affects us all. No one escapes. Therefore let us be happy while we are happy. Let us be kind, generous, affectionate and good. It is necessary and not at all shameful to take pleasure in the little world.

And yet, just as our body would burst asunder if the pressure of the atmosphere were removed from it, so would the arrogance of men expand, if not to the point of bursting then to that of the most unbridled folly, indeed madness, if the pressure of want, toil, calamity and frustration were removed from their life. One can even say that we require at all times a certain quantity of care or sorrow or want, as a ship requires ballast, in order to keep on a straight course.

I cannot raise my worth too high; Of what vast consequence am I! "Not of the importance you suppose," Replies a Flea upon his nose; "Be humble, learn thyself to scan; Know, pride was never made for man.

It's easy to explain away evil. We have a free choice, and our greatest blessing is also our greatest curse, because I don't always make good choices. Other people make bad choices. I make bad choices. And sometimes we hurt other people. Sometimes intentionally, sometimes unintentionally.

Such is the state of every age, every sex, and every condition: all have their cares, either from nature or from folly; and whoever, therefore, finds himself inclined to envy another, should remember that he knows not the real condition which he desires to obtain, but is certain that by indulging a vicious passion, he must lessen that happiness which he thinks already too sparingly bestowed.

Somehow, something is always suffering. Someone is always losing out somehow. If you pick one kid up, you're not picking the other one up. You just try to minimize those small let-downs because, in a way, life is a series of let-downs from everyone, all the time. We don't mean it, but it happens. So, I just try to minimize that and spread them wide.

Contrary to what you believe, the earth does not revolve around the desires of your crotch.

Pryde will have a fall;For pryde goeth before and shame commeth after.

The sum of evil, Pascal remarked, would be much diminished if men could only learn to sit quietly in their rooms.

But cool and candid people will at once reflect, that the purest of human blessings must have a portion of alloy in them, that the choice must always be made, if not of the lesser evil, at least of the GREATER, not the PERFECT good; and that in every political institution, a power to advance the public happiness, involves a discretion which may be misapplied and abused.

Evil events from evil causes spring, And what you suffer flows from what you've done.

Those who are content suffer no disgrace.

There is too much tendency to attribute to God the evils that man does of his own free will. I must concede you the Devil. God doesn't really need to punish us, Miss Barton. We're so busy punishing ourselves.