"Friar Carter gave a pretty stirring little sermon, based on Rogation Days (next Mon - Wed) in which he suggested we were all a lot of untutored robots for not saying Grace; and did not suggest but categorically pronounced Oxford to deserve to be wiped out with fire and blood in the wrath of God for the abominations and wickedness there perpetrated. We all woke up. I am afraid it is all too horribly true.
But I wonder if it is specially true now? A small knowledge of history depresses one with the sense of the everlasting mass and weight of human iniquity: old, old, dreary, endless repetitive unchanging incurable wickedness. All towns, all villages, all habitations of men--sinks! And at the same time one knows that there is always good: much more hidden, much less clearly discerned, seldom breaking out into recognizable, visible, beauties of word or deed or face--not even when in fact sanctity, far greater than the visible advertised wickedness, is really there."
J.R.R. Tolkien in a letter to Christopher Tolkien - May 14, 1944
But I wonder if it is specially true now? A small knowledge of history depresses one with the sense of the everlasting mass and weight of human iniquity: old, old, dreary, endless repetitive unchanging incurable wickedness. All towns, all villages, all habitations of men--sinks! And at the same time one knows that there is always good: much more hidden, much less clearly discerned, seldom breaking out into recognizable, visible, beauties of word or deed or face--not even when in fact sanctity, far greater than the visible advertised wickedness, is really there."
J.R.R. Tolkien in a letter to Christopher Tolkien - May 14, 1944
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