Daily Inspiration Quote by Roald Dahl

A Roald Dahl question like this isn’t seeking an answer so much as setting a trap. The phrasing carries a child’s blunt astonishment, but the target is adult hypocrisy: the gap between the glossy language of virtue and the grubby reality of power. “These men of God” is doing double work. It sounds reverent on the surface, yet Dahl uses it like a pair of tongs, holding the clerical class at a skeptical distance. The sentence is compact, almost biblical in cadence, which makes the accusation feel like it’s being delivered in the house style of the very institution being challenged.

The intent is moral, but not pious. Dahl’s fiction routinely treats authority as suspect and sanctimony as camouflage; he writes from the point of view of the small, the observant, the easily lied to. That’s the subtext here: the speaker has been asked to trust, and now realizes trust has been exploited. “Preach” versus “practice” isn’t just a cliché contrast; it’s a courtroom structure. One side is performance, the other is evidence. By putting them in parallel, Dahl makes hypocrisy measurable, almost procedural.

Contextually, this fits Dahl’s broader project of puncturing respectable facades - a postwar Britain still saturated with deference, where clergy (and other “good” authorities) could claim moral jurisdiction. The line’s sting comes from its simplicity: it refuses theological debate and goes straight to the receipts.