The patrician … has the courage to listen to and retain whatever may be glorious in the ambiguous revelations that are being offered to him; he is re… - R. W. K. Paterson

Our ridicule and disgust are in the end aimed at some unavowed part of our own selves.

In a sense the plebeian has no history. He drudges, recruits his pathetic strength, and reproduces drudges. This is true whether the plebeian, man or woman, works in a field, factory, or office, … whether he continues his drudgery by tilling his meagre vegetable patch or decorating his suburban bungalow, and whether he takes his ease over a cock-fight, in a Victorian gin-palace, or somnolent before a colour television set in Wolverhampton. The fact that such activities and pastimes can be painstakingly recorded and taught as history does not mean that they are worthy of notice, except as warnings and admonitions.

When those around us perceive the world as if it were a narrow and humdrum shopping precinct, in which the best life possible consists in avoiding all risk and striking bargain after bargain in order to multiply and spin out a succession of manageable pleasures, all else being folly, we can easily come to doubt any version of reality in which there is space for grandeur.