[Pascal] was the first and perhaps is still the most effective voice to be raised in warning of the consequences of the enthronement of the human ego in contradistinction to the cross, symbolizing the ego's immolation. How beautiful it all seemed at the time of the Enlightenment, that man triumphant would bring to pass that earthly paradise whose groves of academe would ensure the realization forever of peace, plenty, and beatitude in practice. But what a nightmare of wars, famines, and folly was to result therefrom.

— Malcolm Muggeridge

People think of faith as being something that you don't really believe, a device in helping you believe simply it. Of course that is quite wrong. As Pascal says, faith is a gift of God. It is different from the proof of it. It is the kind of faith God himself places in the heart, of which the proof is often the instrument... He says of it, too, that it is the heart which is aware of God, and not reason. That is what faith is: God perceived by the heart, not be reason.

— Malcolm Muggeridge

St. Teresa of Avila described our life in this world as like a night at a second-class hotel.

— Malcolm Muggeridge

St. Teresa of Avila described our life in this world as like a night in a second-class hotel.

— Malcolm Muggeridge

The depravity of man is at once the most empirically verifiable reality but at the same time the most intellectually resisted fact.

— Malcolm Muggeridge

The orgasm has replaced the Cross as the focus of longing and the image of fulfillment.

— Malcolm Muggeridge

The pursuit of happiness, which American citizens are obliged to undertake, tends to involve them in trying to perpetuate the moods, tastes and aptitudes of youth.

— Malcolm Muggeridge

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

— Malcolm Muggeridge

There's a large strain of irony in our human affairs... Interwoven with our affairs is this wonderful spirit of irony which prevents us from ever being utterly and irretrievably serious, from being unaware of the mysterious nature of our existence.

— Malcolm Muggeridge

Travel, of course, narrows the mind.

— Malcolm Muggeridge