"These are the days when the Christian is expected to praise every creed except his own."

~G.K. Chesterton

"Place people in sight of the pyramids of Egypt, and they will tell you, “Here has passed a grand and barbarous civilisation.” Place them in sight of the Grecian statues and temples, and they will tell you, “Here has passed a graceful, ephemeral, and brilliant civilisation.” Place them in sight of a Roman monument, and they will tell you, “Here has passed a great people.” Place them in sight of a cathedral, and on beholding such majesty united to such beauty, such grandeur to such taste, such grace to such delicacy, such severe unity to such rich variety, such measure to such boldness, such heaviness in the stones, with such suavity in their outlines, and such wonderful harmony between silence and light, shade and colour, they will tell you..."

"Here has passed the greatest people of history, and the most astounding of human civilisations: that people must have taken grandeur from the Egyptian, brilliancy from the Greek, strength from the Roman, and, beyond the strength, the brilliancy, and grandeur, something more valuable than grandeur, strength, and brilliancy—immortality and perfection."

~Juan Donoso Cortes

“The wise men of antiquity, when they wished to make the whole world peaceful and happy, first put their own states into proper order. Before putting their states into proper order, they regulated their own families. Before regulating their families, they regulated themselves. Before regulating themselves, they tried to be sincere in their thoughts. Before being sincere in their thoughts, they tried to see things exactly as they really were.”

~Confucius

“Science alone is untrue because it aims exclusively at truth—divorced from the good and the beautiful. The scientific mind is far too simple. There are too many facts in too mysterious a relationship for his simple mind—logical analytical as it is—to grasp. In theory he is right; in practice he can never get all the facts as long as he specializes exclusively in the nature of discursive reason. For knowledge—as distinct from wisdom and plastic form—of its very nature excludes all facts.”

~Carl Schmitt

“More people have been imprisoned for Liberty, humiliated and tortured for Equality, and slaughtered for Fraternity in this century, than for any less hypocritical motives, during the Middle Ages.”

~Roy Campbell, 1901-1957

"It is a characteristic of any decaying civilization that the great masses of the people are unaware of the tragedy.

Humanity in a crisis is generally insensitive to the gravity of the times in which it lives. Men do not want to believe their own times are wicked, partly because they have no standard outside of themselves by which to measure their times. If there is no fixed concept of justice, how shall men know it is violated?

Only those who live by faith really know what is happening in the world; the great masses without faith are unconscious of the destructive processes going on, because they have lost the vision of the heights from which they have fallen.”

~Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen

"Technology alienates those who depend on it and live by it. It deadens their human qualities and their moral perceptiveness. Gradually, everything becomes centered on the most efficient use of machines and techniques of production, and the style of life, the culture, the tempo and the manner of existence responds more and more to the needs of the technological process itself. Unfortunately it is too often assumed that the technological process is inevitably rational. This is not the case. It is sometimes highly irrational—to the point that what is good for the process may be very bad indeed for humans.”

~Thomas Merton

"We have to condemn publicly the very idea that some people have the right to repress others. In keeping silent about evil, in burying it so deep within us that no sign of it appears on the surface, we are implanting it, and it will rise up a thousandfold in the future. When we neither punish nor reproach evildoers, we are not simply protecting their trivial old age, we are thereby ripping the foundations of justice from beneath new generations. It is for this reason, and not because of the “weakness of indoctrinational work,” that they are growing up “indifferent.” Young people are acquiring the conviction that foul deeds are never punished on earth, that they always bring prosperity. It is going to be uncomfortable, horrible, to live in such a country!"

~Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago

"I saw the snares of the devil sprawled out across the world. And so I asked 'How can one possibly avoid them?' And a strong voice came from above and said, 'Humility.'"

+St. Anthony the Great

"The power of the Good has taken refuge in the nature of the Beautiful."

~Plato

"The breakdown of traditional values to some extent implies the breakdown of the bonds that hold together traditional smallscale social groups. The disintegration of small-scale social groups is also promoted by the fact that modern conditions often require or tempt individuals to move to new locations, separating themselves from their communities. Beyond that, a technological society HAS TO weaken family ties and local communities if it is to function efficiently. In modern society an individual's loyalty must be first to the system and only secondarily to a smallscale community, because if the internal loyalties of small-scale communities were stronger than loyalty to the system, such communities would pursue their own advantage at the expense of the system."

~Theodore Kaczynski

"The glory of wealth and physical beauty is fluid and fragile; but virtue is held brilliant and eternal."

~Sallust

“A great deal of the current cult of pleasure, of luxury, of liberty in love, and all the rest of it, appears to me to be perfectly childish; and childish in the literal sense that it is greedy without any grasp of consequences.”

~G.K. Chesterton

“The freest man on earth is he who makes himself a slave to a perfect master.”

~Paul Washer

“As the astronauts soar into the vast eternities of space, on earth the garbage piles higher; as the groves of academe extend their domain, their alumni’s arms reach lower; as the phallic cult spreads, so does impotence. In great wealth, great poverty; in health, sickness; in numbers, deception. Gorging, left hungry; sedated, left restless; telling all, hiding all; in flesh united, forever separate. So we press on through the valley of abundance that leads to the wasteland of satiety, passing through the gardens of fantasy; seeking happiness ever more ardently, and finding despair ever more surely.”

~Malcolm Muggeridge

“This is no time for believing everyone, believe only those whom you see modeling their lives on the life of Christ. Endeavor always to have a good conscience; practice humility; despise all worldly things; and believe firmly in the teaching of our Holy Mother Church."

+St. Teresa of Avila

“There is an essential bond between human freedom and truth, so that freedom which refused to be bound to the truth would fall into arbitrariness and end up submitting itself to the vilest of passions, to the point of self-destruction.”

~Pope Leo XIII

“Jesus forced open a door that has been locked since the death of the first man. He has met, fought, and beaten the King of Death. Everything is different because [of the Resurrection]. This is the beginning of the New Creation: a new chapter in cosmic history has opened.”

~C.S. Lewis

"Today is the day of salvation for the world... Christ is risen from the dead: arise with him. Christ returns to himself: you also must return to him. Christ has come forth from the tomb: free yourselves from the fetters of evil. The gates of hell are open and the power of death is destroyed. The old Adam is superseded, the new perfected. In Christ a new creation is coming to birth: renew yourselves."

+St. Gregory the Theologian