A novel is balanced between a few true impressions and a multitude of false ones that make up most of what we call life.

Be honorable yourself if you wish to associate with honorable people.

Between truth and the search for it, I choose the second.

Each of the arts whose office is to refine, purify, adorn, embellish and grace life is under the patronage of a muse, no god being found worthy to preside over them.

What is sauce for the goose, is sauce for the gander.

Feast of Richard of Chichester, Bishop, 1253 Commemoration of Joseph Butler, Bishop of Durham, Moral Philosopher, 1752 By giving humans freedom of will, the Creator has chosen to limit His own power. He risked the daring experiment of giving us the freedom to make good or bad decisions, to live decent or evil lives, because God does not want the forced obedience of slaves. Instead, He covets the voluntary love and obedience of sons who love Him for Himself.

If... you are ever tempted to think that we modern Western Europeans cannot really be so very bad because we are, comparatively speaking, humane--if, in other words, you think God might be content with us on that ground--ask yourself whether you think God ought to have been content with the cruelty of past ages because they excelled in courage or chastity. You will see at once that this is an impossibility. From considering how the cruelty of our ancestors looks to us, you may get some inkling of how our softness, worldliness, and timidity would have looked to them, and hence how both must look to God.

Let us so live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.

Feast of Richard of Chichester, Bishop, 1253 Commemoration of Joseph Butler, Bishop of Durham, Moral Philosopher, 1752 The Christian should be a conscience in his group. His presence must never be used to provide a Christian justification for evil. To stand as a co-belligerent and not an ally will be to rally the middle ground for a genuine Third Way without mediocre compromise. The Third Way will not be easy. It will be lonely. Sometimes the Christian must have the courage to stand with the establishment, speaking boldly to the radicals and pointing out the destructive and counter-productive nature of their violence. At other times, he will stand as a co-belligerent with the radicals in their outrage and just demands for redress. The Christian is a co-belligerent with either or both when either or both are right, but... fearless in his opposition to either or both when they are wrong.

A film is a petrified fountain of thought.

We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.

'Tis easy enough to be pleasant, When life flows along like a song; But the man worth while is the one who will smile When everything does dead wrong; For the test of the heart is trouble, And it always comes with the years, But the smile that is worth the praise of earth Is the smile that comes through tears. . . . . But the virtue that conquers passion, And the sorrow that hides in a smile-- It is these that are worth the homage of earth, For we find them but once in a while.

I wasn't affected by inflation -- I had nothing to inflate.

Feast of George, Martyr, Patron of England, c.304 Commemoration of Michael Ramsey, Archbishop of Canterbury, Teacher, 1988 The Christian's life is lived in the open, not in a pious cubby-hole. As Christ gives Himself to feed us, so we have to incarnate something of His all-loving, all-sacrificing soul. If we do not, then we have not really received Him. That is the plain truth. It has been said that there are many ways and degrees of receiving the Blessed Sacrament. It really depends on how wide we open our hearts. A spiritually selfish communion is not a communion at all.

I am a part of all that I have seen.

The fruit derived from labor is the sweetest of all pleasures.

I would prefer as friend a good man ignorant than one more clever who is evil too.

The US has a vital interest in that area of the country .

Great wits and valours, like great states, Do sometimes sink with their own weights.

To believe with certainty we must begin with doubting.