The priest and the chemist's son went off on their own. They left the park, jumped a brook and took a path flanked by tall whitethorn hedges.
"We belong to different generations, but to the same species of young man, recognizable by the fact that we take seriously the principles proclaimed by our fathers or schoolmasters or priests. Those principles are proclaimed as the foundations of society, but it is easy to see that the actual functioning of that society conflicts with or ignores them. The majority, the sceptics, adapt themselves, the others become revolutionaries."
"The sceptics," Pompeo said, "maintain that the discrepancy between doctrine and reality is an ineluctable fact of life. What is the answer?"
"It may be. But revolutions are also facts of life," Don Paolo said. "Everyone must make his choice."
"You're right," Pompeo said. "What matters is the use one makes of one's life."
(Ignazio Silone, Bread and Wine)
