The Secret Pilgrim

by John Le Carré

Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach.

Easy to sell one’s soul at your age. Harder later.’

The purpose of my life was to end the time I lived in. So if my past were still around today, you could say I’d failed.

‘And if you want my personal opinion, you’re bloody lucky.’

wise nodder,

‘Less vulgar, but still not there.’

I had given him a packet of cigarettes and he was devouring them one after another, making a gas chamber of our little room.

To this day, my soul can be bought for a jar of Lübeck beer, a pickled herring and a glass of schnapps after a trudge along the dykes.

‘Now you won’t know this, Rosie, and there’s no reason why you should, but my Beckie has the best pair of hands for her age in the whole of South Croydon—’

you can only govern fairly with the consent of the governed,

This world is a comedy to those that think, said Walpole, a tragedy to those that feel. Well,

the learned eyes appeared a mite too small for their sockets,

slipped furtively to one side in the manner of a diner in a restaurant who catches sight of a better meal passing by.

accepting the homage that is not their due.

their longevity becomes their justification.

With ceremony, Ladislaus Kaldor rose from his chair and pumped my hand as if we had concluded a profitable deal.

First we idiots do what we want to do, he said; then we look round for justifications for having done it.

incomprehension of my uselessness; a sense that, for all my striving, I had failed to come to grips with life; that in struggling to give freedom to others, I had found

But I still looked to the world to provide me with the chance to make my contribution – and I blamed it for not knowing how to use me.

‘the Devil is often far better company than the Godly, isn’t he? All the same, our obsession with virtue won’t go away.