"it is only by eternal institutions like hair that we can test passing institutions like empires. If a house is so built as to knock a man's head off when he enters it, it is built wrong.:

G.K. Chesterton What’s Wrong with the World p. 193.

"Chesterton begins his essay ["The Philosophy of Gratitude"] by recounting a passage from a letter he received in response to one of his essays. The writer wanted to know the meaning of the following sentence that he had read in Chesterton: 'No one can be miserable who has noticed anything worth being miserable about.' Chesterton tells us that he wrote this sentence in 'a wild moment.' But it was still true, whatever its wildness. If I notice that I am miserable, then I must have some sense of what it means to be not miserable. My condition, in other words, is not exclusively locked into misery."

James V. Schall SJ in Gilbert Magazine Vol. 13 # 8 (July-August 2010)

"For when once people have begun to believe that prosperity is the reward of virtue their next calamity is obvious. If prosperity is regarded as the reward of virtues, it will be regarded as the symptom of virtue. Men will leave off the heavy task of making good men successful. They will adopt the easier task of making our successful men good."

G.K. Chesterton, “The Book of Job,” in Alberto Manguel, ed., On Lying in Bed and Other Essays by G.K. Chesterton

"You say you want man to be to himself what God has been to man. But what God has been to man is man’s absolute superior, and man cannot be his own superior…. So when you say you want man to be to himself what God has been to man hitherto, you mean you want some men to be to other men what God has been to man. You want some men to be the absolute superiors of others. I assume that you want to be in the former group and not in the latter."

J. Budziszewski in What We Can’t Not Know [part of his Platonic dialogue with a skeptic].

In some sense the French Revolution was “the black desperate battle of Men against their whole Condition and Environment, - a battle, alas, withal, against the Sin and Darkness that was in themselves as in others: this is the Reign of Terror."

Thomas Carlyle The French Revolution

"Knowledge is proud that he has learned so much; wisdom is humble that he does not know more."

William Cowper

"I won’t quarrel with Ralph Wood’s judgment that my book [The Naked Public Square] was intended as a corrective. Yet there was also a remedy proposed, and Wood says it has failed. I would prefer to say it has not been tried, but I admit that that may be something like failing."

Richard John Neuhaus in First Things #147 (November 2004)

"If you will not have God (and He is a jealous God) you should pay your respects to Hitler or Stalin."

T.S. Eliot "The Idea of a Christian Society" quoted in Russell Kirk The Politics of Prudence