“At that moment, and only for that moment, everything fitted into place. Every tendency in himself, in societies; the past and the future; all he had ever seen or thought or felt or believed, sorted itself out. It was a vision of Good and Evil. Heaven and Hell. Life and death. There were two alternatives; and he had to choose. He chose.”
Malcolm Muggeridge "Winter in Moscow" (1934), in Ian Hunter, ed., The Very Best of Malcolm Muggeridge.
"The contemplative life is often miserable. You should do more, think less and not watch yourself living."
Nicholas-Sebastien Chamfort, quoted as "Thought du jour" in Globe & Mail Oct. 22, 2002
"I allow that, if no Supreme Ruler exists, wise to form and potent to enforce the moral law, there is no sanction to any contract, virtual or even actual, against the will of prevalent power. On that hypothesis let any set of men be strong enough to set their duties at defiance, and they cease to be duties any longer.”
Edmund Burke An Appeal from the Old to the New Whigs
"It grieves them more to own a bad house than a bad life…"
St. Augustine The City of God (speaking of "evil men")
"it is axiomatic that one cannot have a duty to do something that cannot be done."
George Will in Washington Post August 17, 2003, quoted in Natan Sharansky with Ron Dermer The Case for Democracy
In my latest National Post column I say liberal reactions to actual diversity tend to be unfavourable, suggesting that their theoretical devotion to it simply confuses debate.
“Have they [the philosophers] found the cure for our ills? Is it curing man’s presumption to set him up as God’s equal?”
Blaise Pascal Pensées
"To the materialist things like nations, classes, civilizations must be more important than individuals, because the individuals live only seventy-odd years each and the group may last for centuries. But to the Christian, individuals are more important, for they live eternally; and races, civilizations and the like, are in comparison the creatures of a day."
C.S. Lewis “Man or Rabbit?” in The Grand Miracle