"Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not."

~Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Until now, mankind never knew a god whom they could love truly, so they didn't love each other either, which brought them misfortune, because as the way light comes from the sun, so is happiness born out of love. No rulers or philosophers ever conceived this truth, therefore love didn't exist in Greece and Rome; and when I say Rome I think of the whole world. The cold and dull teachings of the stoics, which the virtuous look up to, forge their hearts the way a sword is hardened, but makes it more indifferent, not more loving."

~Henryk Sienkiewicz, Quo Vadis

"Bad heroes give glamour to flaws of character."

~Plato

"What is hypocrisy? The desire to look better than you are; the hiding of things you do, because you would not be supposed to do them, because you would be ashamed to have them known where you are known. The doing of them is foul; the hiding of them, in order to appear better than you are is fouler still."

~George MacDonald

"What makes it so plausible to assume that hypocrisy is the vice of vices is that integrity can indeed exist under the cover of all other vices except this one."

~Hannah Arendt

"The only vice that cannot be forgiven is hypocrisy. The repentance of a hypocrite is itself hypocrisy."

~William Hazlitt

"Human history is the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy."

~C.S. Lewis

"Beauty is an exquisite flower, and its perfume is virtue."

~Giovanni Ruffini

"Kings can occasionally be bought, democracies are always for sale."

~Aristokles Smith

“When a government is dependent upon bankers for money, they and not the leaders of the government control the situation, since the hand that gives is above the hand that takes. Money has no motherland; financiers are without patriotism and without decency; their sole object is gain.”

"The only institution ever devised by men for mastering the money-power of the State, is Monarchy."

~Napoleon Bonaparte

“That what is called democracy is always in fact plutocracy. The only alternative to the rule of the rich is to have a ruler who is deliberately made more powerful even than the rich. It is to have ruler who is secure of his place, instead of rulers who are fighting for their place.”

~G.K. Chesterton

"Beauty is truth, truth beauty, —that is all / Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."

~John Keats

"The simple step of a courageous individual is not to partake in the lie, not to support false actions! Let THAT enter the world, let it even reign in the world – but not through me... One word of truth outweighs the whole world."

~Alexandr Solzhenitsyn

"Man must be free, but freedom does not exist except within an order."

~José Antonio Primo de Rivera

"Liberty does not exist in the absence of morality."

~Edmund Burke

"It's not to taste sweet things, but to do noble and true things, and vindicate himself under God's heaven as a god-made Man, that the poorest son of Adam dimly longs. Show him the way of doing that, the dullest daydrudge kindles into a hero."

~Thomas Carlyle

"The one perfectly divine thing, the one glimpse of God's paradise given on earth, is to fight a losing battle - and not lose it."

“Faith is always at a disadvantage; it is a perpetually defeated thing which survives all conquerors.”

"The cross cannot be defeated. For it is Defeat."

~G.K. Chesterton

"To be rooted is perhaps the most important and least recognised need of the human soul."

~Simone Weil

"Love isn't something natural. Rather it requires discipline, concentration, patience, faith, and the overcoming of narcissism. It isn't a feeling, it is a practice."

"Love is a decision, it is a judgment, it is a promise. If love were only a feeling, there would be no basis for the promise to love each other forever. A feeling comes and it may go. How can I judge that it will stay forever, when my act does not involve judgment and decision."

~Erich Fromm

"Painting is poetry that is seen rather than felt, and poetry is painting that is felt rather than seen."

~Leonardo da Vinci

"As a soldier of Christ, your virtues may be objects of hatred for the wicked, but they will never lack the approbation of the good and wise, which is the greatest and only desirable honour."

~Pope Leo XIII