"It is difficult to persuade mankind that the love of virtue is the love of themselves."

~Cicero

"If I swallow the scientific cosmology as a whole, then not only can I not fit in religion, but I cannot even fit in science. If minds are wholly dependent on brains, and brains on biochemistry, and biochemistry on the meaningless flux of atoms... I cannot understand how the thought of minds should have any more significance than the sound of the wind in trees "

~C.S. Lewis

"Today every passion that is not for money, pleasure or honor is called unreasonable and fanatical."

~Louis de Bonald

“Through all time, if we read aright, sin was, is, will be, the parent of misery.”

~Thomas Carlyle

'Whatever belongs to horror and to night, to disease, death and decay, whatever is crass, obscene and perverse, whatever is mechanical and a denial of the spirit—all these motifs and aspects of the inhuman take hold of man and of his familiar world. They make of man a ruin, an automaton, a mask, a phantom. He sinks to the level of a louse, an insect. In the various movements of modern painting it is always one or the other of these various anti-human attributes that is underlined. Cubism lays the emphasis on deadness, Expressionism on boiling chaos, Surrealism on the cold demonism of the last icy regions of Hell.' - Hans Sedlmayr

Above: Paul Klee, 'Moribundus' 1919

“The quest for community will not be denied, for it springs from some of the powerful needs of human nature—needs for a clear sense of cultural purpose, membership, status, and continuity.“

~Robert Nisbet

“All culture arises out of religion. When religious faith decays, culture must decline, though often seeming to flourish for a space after the religion which has nourished it has sunk into disbelief. But neither can religion subsist if severed from a healthy culture; no cultured person should remain indifferent to erosion of apprehension of the transcendent.”

~Russell Kirk

"A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship.

The average age of the world's greatest civilizations from the beginning of history has been about 200 years. During those 200 years, these nations always progressed through the following sequence: from bondage to spiritual faith; from spiritual faith to great courage; from courage to liberty; from liberty to abundance; from abundance to selfishness; from selfishness to complacency; from complacency to apathy; from apathy to dependence; from dependence back into bondage.”

~Alexander Fraser Tytler

“As between individuals, without a common idea there can be no true unity between peoples, and this common idea must be placed as highly as possible so that it can be seen from far around. By putting it too low, under the pretense of making it more accessible, it degrades the best, and only acknowledges the mediocre in their mediocrity. A high idea does not need to be understood by every citizen in order to be taken part of; it is enough for it to be in the air as it acts both directly and indirectly on our consciences.”

~Georges Bernanos

"As political and economic freedom diminishes, sexual freedom tends correspondingly to increase. And the dictator will do well to encourage that freedom... it will help to reconcile his subjects to the servitude which is their fate."

~Aldous Huxley

“Civilization is a discipline, an achievement in self-culture and self-control, and the only civilizing agent is a spirit manifesting itself through reason, imagination, and religious inspiration, and giving a sort of mintage to acts which would otherwise be without meaning.”

~Richard Weaver

"There is only one way to salvation, and that is to make yourself responsible for all men's sins. As soon as you make yourself responsible in all sincerity for everything and for everyone, you will see at once that this is really so, and that you are in fact to blame for everyone and for all things."

~Fyodor Dostoyevsky

"But my sin was this, that I looked for pleasure, beauty, and truth not in Him but in myself and His other creatures, and the search led me instead to pain, confusion, and error."

+Saint Augustine, The Confessions

“Ideological ugliness in the name of egalitarianism continues to do damage, with the paradoxical result that it increases inequality: for as it destroys beauty and elegance, so beauty and elegance become ever more rarefied and available to a smaller and smaller elite, and this is so even where income and consumption increase. The standard of living rises while the quality of life falls.”

~Theodore Dalrymple

“I am becoming orthodox," I said, "because I have come, rightly or wrongly, after stretching my brain till it bursts, to the old belief that heresy is worse even than sin. An error is more menacing than a crime, for an error begets crimes.”

~G.K. Chesterton

“It is only the infinite mercy and love of God that has prevented us from tearing ourselves to pieces and destroying His entire creation long ago. People seem to think that it is in some way a proof that no merciful God exists, if we have so many wars. On the contrary, consider how in spite of centuries of sin and greed and lust and cruelty and hatred and avarice and oppression and injustice, spawned and bred by the free wills of men, the human race can still recover, each time, and can still produce men and women who overcome evil with good, hatred with love, greed with charity, lust and cruelty with sanctity. How could all this be possible without the merciful love of God, pouring out His grace upon us? Can there be any doubt where wars come from and where peace comes from, when the children of this world, excluding God from their peace conferences, only manage to bring about greater and greater wars the more they talk about peace?”

~Thomas Merton

“Floods will rob us of one thing, fire of another. These are conditions of our existence which we cannot change. What we can do is adopt a noble spirit, such a spirit as befits a good person, so that we may bear up bravely under all that fortune sends us and bring our wills into tune with nature’s.”

~Seneca

"The man who is truly good and wise will bear with dignity whatever fortune sends, and will always make the best of his circumstances."

~Aristotle

“Modernity: we created youth without heroism, age without wisdom, and life without grandeur.”

~Nassim Nicholas Taleb