While rationalism at the individual level is a plea for more personal autonomy from cultural norms, at the social level it is often a claim- or arrogation- of power to stifle the autonomy of others.

The most complex things are the simplest.

By merit raised To that bad eminence.

A bargain is something you don't need at a price you can't resist.

Is there evil but on earth? Or pain in every people sphere? Well, be grateful for the sounding watchword "Evolution" here.

Hard work has future payoff. Laziness pays off now.

Zeal without knowledge is like fire without light.

I know you know what I think I said, but I'm not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.

Intimate or drastic elements in the work of others are untouchable and should not be commented upon even in their absence. Private conflicts, quarrels, sentiments, animosities are unavoidable in any human group. It is our duty towards creation to keep these in check in so far as they might deform and wreck the work process.

Nobody roots for Goliath.

Come, woo me, woo me; for now I am in holiday humor and like enough to consent.

Do it, dump it, or change it.

Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violen trevolution inevitable.

A theory can be proved by experiment; but no path leads from experiment to the birth of a theory.

[In a] natural fear of lowering the Divine dignity of Christ, we often forget His true humanity. We think of His earthly life as moving on a plane so different from ours that no parallel can be drawn between them. What we forget is, that He too needed to walk by faith, needed to be filled with the Holy Spirit, needed the sympathy of loving friends, needed the strengthening that is gained by private prayer. His strong and beautiful, serene and holy life so fills the eye that we lose sight of His secret intercourse with the Father, out of which came all its beauty, all its power.

Feast of Benedict of Nursia, Father of Western Monasticism, c.550 Christian history looks glorious in retrospect; but it is made up of constant hard choices and unattractive tasks, accepted under the pressure of the Will of God.

There is a continuum of values between the churches and the general community. What distinguishes the handling of these values in the churches is mainly the heavier dosage of religious vocabulary involved... Another way of putting this is to say that the churches operate with secular values while the secular institutions are permeated with religious terminology... An objective observer is hard put to tell the difference (at least in terms of values affirmed) between the church members and those who maintain an 'unchurched' status. Usually the most that can be said is that the church members hold the same values as everybody else, but with more emphatic solemnity. Thus, church membership in no way means adherence to a set of values at variance with those of the general society; rather, it means a stronger and more explicitly religious affirmation of the same values held by the community at large.

Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect everyone who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are inevitably ruined.

Our best thoughts come from others.

Each generation produces its squad of "moderns" with peashooters to attack Gibraltar.