“One general description of madness, it seems to us, might be found in the statement that madness is a preference for the symbol over that which it represents.”

G.K. Chesterton, “Lunacy and Letters,” in Alberto Manguel, ed., On Lying in Bed and Other Essays by G.K. Chesterton

“Even if it were true that a hundred persons would experience more pleasure from torturing one person than that person would experience pain (in some dreadful utilitarian calculus), such an action would be an abomination. The person is never subordinate to the common good in an instrumental way. Persons are not means but ends, because of the God in Whom they live and Who lives in them.”

Michael Novak, Free Persons and the Common Good

“It is the duty of all men in society, publicly, and at stated seasons, to worship the SUPREME BEING, the great Creator and Preserver of the universe. And no subject shall be hurt, molested, or restrained, in his person, liberty, or estate, for worshipping GOD in the manner most agreeable to the dictates of his own conscience; or for his religious profession or sentiments; provided he doth not disturb the public peace, or obstruct others in their religious worship.”

John Adams in “Thoughts on Government, 1776” quoted by The Federalist Patriot “Founders' Quote Daily” (federalist.com) Nov. 21, 2005

“The modern artist, only too often, loses himself in seeking to find and fix himself; he imposes a fictitious self upon that unthinking real self which otherwise would be expressed freely. He has become an individualist, and ceased to be an individual. Nay, he has even become a madman in the most frightful and vivid meaning of the term. He has become conscious of his subconsciousness.”

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

“Yes, ‘hereafter’ was everything: without that prospect, all life would have been a nasty joke…”

The internal monologue of Eddie Cain in “Lex Talionis” in Russell Kirk Ancestral Shadows

“There is a proof that common sense and the higher mysteries lie very close together. It is the fact that they are frequently and even continually absent simultaneously from the same person.”

G.K. Chesterton in Daily News April 2, 1904, quoted in Gilbert Magazine Vol. 8 # 6 4-5/05

“The idea that church and state should never mix has always been popular among those who think churches should not exist…. To a faithful Christian mind, or Jewish, or Muslim, or Hindu, or Sikh … the issue can’t be as simple as that. The elector votes with his whole heart…. Moreover, the state does not exist in a moral and spiritual vacuum… Government and electorate are alike bound, even when they deny it, to standards deeper and older than themselves…. even in our present rather sunken condition of public life, the vast majority of people are prepared to distinguish right from wrong under earnest cross-examination. And so powerful is the hold of nature, and nature's law upon them, that they will more or less agree on the moral inadvisability of murder, extortion, theft, perversion, fraud, perjury and so forth. This hardly means they are free of temptation to crime themselves, in their private lives. Nor am I denying the existence of a growing vanguard who in the absence of real social pressure are prepared to argue that fair is foul and foul is fair.”

David Warren in Ottawa Citizen Nov. 20, 2005