Friday, August 31, 2018

"Awful faces from beyond"

"WE sit by and watch the Barbarian, we tolerate him; in the long stretches of peace we are not afraid.

"We are tickled by his irreverence, his comic inversion of our old certitudes and our fixed creeds refreshes us: we laugh. But as we laugh we are watched by large and awful faces from beyond: and on these faces there is no smile."

~Hilaire Belloc: The Barbarians


Complete essay here

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