The tattoo has a profound meaning: the superficiality of modern man’s existence. - Theodore Dalrymple

There is no such thing, wrote Oscar Wilde, as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. Presumably, then, Mein Kampf would have been all right had it been better written.

If we can sympathise only with the utterly blameless, then we can sympathise with no one, for all of us have contributed to our own misfortunes - it is a consequence of the human condition that we should. But it does nobody any favours to disguise from him the origins of his misfortunes, and pretend that they are all external to him in circumstances in which they are not.

Civilization is the sum total of all those activities that allow men to transcend mere biological existence and reach for a richer mental, aesthetic, material, and spiritual life.