Great, Though Dark, Whittaker Chambers Quote

I've finally gotten around to reading the Whittaker Chambers classic Witness, which is about his time as a Communist and his conversion to the light (and the Republican Party).  The Foreword is written by William F. Buckley  and they include this gem of a quote from Whittaker Chambers:

It is idle to talk about preventing the wreck of Western civilization. It is already a wreck from within. That is why we can hope to do little more now than snatch a fingernail of a saint from the rack or a handful of ashes from the faggots, and bury them secretly in a flowerpot against the day, ages hence, when a few men begin again to dare to believe that there was once something else, that something else is thinkable, and need some evidence of what it was, and the fortifying knowledge that there were those who, at the great nightfall, took loving thought to preserve the tokens of hope and truth.