If humanity does not opt for integrity we are through completely. It is absolutely touch and go. Each one of us could make the difference.

This world is run with far too tight a rein for luck to interfere. Fortune sells her wares; she never gives them. In some form or other, we pay for her favors; or we go empty away.

The idol-maker may know, more or less clearly, that he is only giving shape to the half-formed concept of God in his head; that his images are solid metaphors -- what we call symbols. The skeptical Greek philosopher may remind us that, after all, the image of Athena is only a symbol, only a means of fixing one's rambling thoughts upon the spirit that is Athena. Yet the idolater will persist in losing sight of the forest for the trees, and the god for the image. The gold and ivory statue of Athena becomes holy in itself, an answerer of prayer, a mysterious source of power, a material object somehow different from other objects. The crucifix, the plaster image, the saint's relic or miraculous medal or cheaply and illegibly printed Bible may become themselves things considered holy and magical, able to stop a bullet. Worse yet, the god confined in an image is a shrunken and powerless god. Because you have limited your concept of God to a man shape on a carved crucifix, you may be in danger of inferring that you are free to outrage the man shapes walking and breathing around you. Because you worship the god in a specially baked wafer and a specially designed chalice, you may forget to worship the God of all bread and all wine.

Think, or be damned.

One often learns more from ten days of agony than from ten years of contentment.

Nature teaches beasts to know their friends. -Coriolanus. Act ii. Sc. 1.

And in that day seven women shall take hold of one man, saying, We will eat our own bread, and wear our own apparel: only let us be called by thy name, to take away our reproach.

Feast of Thomas Aquinas, Priest, Teacher of the Faith, 1274 This Christian claim [of universal validity] is naturally offensive to the adherents of every other religious system. It is almost as offensive to modern man, brought up in the atmosphere of relativism, in which tolerance is regarded almost as the highest of the virtues. But we must not suppose that this claim to universal validity is something that can quietly be removed from the Gospel without changing it into something entirely different from what it is... Jesus' life, his method, and his message do not make sense, unless they are interpreted in the light of his own conviction that he was in fact the final and decisive word of God to men... For the human sickness there is one specific remedy, and this is it. There is no other.

Sometimes something worth doing is worth overdoing.

What beck'ning ghost along the moonlight shade Invites my steps, and points to yonder glade?

Keep your fears to yourself, but share your courage with others. -Robert Louis Stevenson.

Certainly, travel is more than the seeing of sights; it is a change that goes on, deep and permanent, in the ideas of living.

Thoughts lead to acts.Acts lead to habits.Habits lead to character.And our character will determine our eternal destiny.

Better a friendly refusal than an unwilling consent.

If you don't know where you're going how do you expect to get there.

We should be as careful of the books we read, as of the company we keep. The dead very often have more power than the living.

The rung of a ladder was never meant to rest upon, but only to hold a man's foot long enough to enable him to put the other somewhat higher. - Life and Letters of Thomas Huxley.

Hymns appropriate to the occasion. Dentist's Hymn -- "Crown Him with Many Crowns" TV Weatherman's Hymn -- "Showers of Blessing" Contractor's Hymn -- "The Church's One Foundation" Tailor's Hymn -- "Holy, Holy, Holy" Golfer's Hymn -- "There Is a Green Hill Far Away" Politician's Hymn -- "Standing on the Promises" IRS Hymn -- "All to Thee" Gossiper's Hymn -- "Pass it On" Electrician's Hymn -- "Send the Light" Shopper's Hymn -- "Sweet By and By" If you MUST speed on the highway, sing these hymns loudly: at 45 mph.... "God Will Take Care of Me" at 55 mph.... "Guide me, O Great Jehovah" at 65 mph.... "Nearer My God to Thee" at 75 mph.... "Nearer Still Nearer" at 85 mph.... "This World is Not My Home" at 95 mph.... "Lord, I'm Coming Home" at 100 mph.... "Precious Memories".

It is in vain, 0 men, that you seek within yourselves the cure for your miseries. All your insight only leads you to the knowledge that it is not in yourselves that you will discover the true and the good. The philosophers promised them to you, and have not been able to keep their promises... Your principal maladies are pride, which cuts you off from God, and sensuality, which binds you to the earth; and they have done nothing but foster at least one of these maladies. If they have given you God for your object, it has only been to pander to your pride; they have made you think that you were like Him and resembled Him by your nature. And those who have grasped the vanity of such a pretension have cast you down into the other abyss by making you believe that your nature was like that of the beasts of the field, and have led you to seek your good in lust, which is the lot of animals.

A vow is a snare for sin.