The more hostile a person is to what has been handed down, the more determinedly he will subordinate his private life to the standards he wishes to elevate as legislators for a future condition of society. It is as if those standards obliged him, though they are nowhere accepted as yet, at least within his own circle to uphold them as exemplary. However, the man who knows himself to be in accord with the most ancient traditions of his class or people will occasionally order his private life in flagrant contrast to the maxims he relentlessly champions in public, and without the least qualm of conscience praise his own conduct as secretly providing cogent proof of the unassailable authority of the principles he espouses. It is what differentiates two types of politician: the anarcho-socialist and the conservative.
— W. Benjamin, in J.A. Underwood’s translation of “One-Way Street.”
Yes. Hence your “Clean living under difficult circumstances”, Adam?
Just so.