Polluted air makes us suffocate, polluted water and food make us sick, but polluted words deliver us over to the worst of all fates””to be imprisoned inexorably in fantasy. An iron curtain falls between us and reality. There is hope that the polluted air and water and food may sometimes be purified, but once words are polluted they are lost forever, old lexicons are their cemeteries, and turning over the pages is like visiting their graves.
–Malcolm Muggeridge Time and Eternity: Uncollected Writings 1933-1983 (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 2010)
Notable and Quotable (II)
Polluted air makes us suffocate, polluted water and food make us sick, but polluted words deliver us over to the worst of all fates””to be imprisoned inexorably in fantasy. An iron curtain falls between us and reality. There is hope that the polluted air and water and food may sometimes be purified, but once words are polluted they are lost forever, old lexicons are their cemeteries, and turning over the pages is like visiting their graves.
–Malcolm Muggeridge Time and Eternity: Uncollected Writings 1933-1983 (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 2010)