O weariness of men who turn from GOD

To the grandeur of your mind and the glory of your action,

To arts and inventions and daring enterprises,

To schemes of human greatness thoroughly discredited…

Plotting of happiness and flinging empty bottles,

Turning from your vacancy to fevered enthusiasm

For nation or race or what you call humanity…

Thomas Stearns Eliot, Choruses from ‘The Rock’

Imagine there’s no heaven—It’s easy if you try.

No hell below us,

Above us only sky.

Imagine all the people

Living for today.

Imagine there’s no countries—It isn’t hard to do.

Nothing to kill or die for,

And no religion too.

Imagine all the people

Living life in peace.

John Lennon, ‘Imagine’

the incorruptible Professor walked, too, averting his eyes from the odious multitude of mankind. He had no future. He disdained it. He was a force. His thoughts caressed the images of ruin and destruction. He walked frail, insignificant, shabby, miserable—and terrible in the simplicity of his idea calling madness and despair to the regeneration of the world. Nobody looked at him. He passed on unsuspected and deadly, like a pest in the street full of men.

Joseph Conrad, The Secret Agent

Be not afraid.

John Paul II