Being precedes Truth, and ... Truth precedes the Good.

... the greatest menace to our capacity for contemplation is the incessant fabrication of tawdry empty stimuli which kill the receptivity of the soul.

Unless we regain the art of silence and insight, the ability for nonactivity, unless we substitute true leisure for our hectic amusements, we will destroy our culture and ourselves.

Leisure is only possible when we are at one with ourselves. We tend to overwork as a means of self-escape, as a way of trying to justify our existence.

Modern religious teaching have little or nothing to say about the place of prudence in life or in the hierarchy of virtues.

Wonder is defined by Thomas [Aquinas] in the Summa Theologiae [I-II, Q. 32, a. 8], as the desiderium sciendi, the desire for knowledge, active longing to know.

To celebrate a festival means: to live out, for some special occasion and in an uncommon manner, the universal assent to the world as a whole.

All just order in the world is based on this, that man give man what is his due.

[T]o know means to reach the reality of existing things[.]

The "supreme good" and its attainment -- that is happiness. And joy is: response to happiness.

The ultimate meaning of the active life is to make possible the happiness of contemplation.

Although failure is a good learning experience, you don’t have to go through life making mistakes if they can be avoided.

[Magnus] held on to the boy, newborn in grave dirt and blood, and he wished that he had found him dead.

You have to climb to reach a deep thought.

The moment it begins to question itself, the mind becomes so clear that it starts working with itself rather than with the body's identification.

But I wish they would make a musical of some kind. I miss musicals so much. You don't see them anymore.

All Moanday, Tearday, Wailsday, Thumpsday, Frightday, Shatterday.

My method is conversion, not coercion, it is self-suffering, not the suffering of the tyrant. I know that method to be infallible.

Utility is the true criterion of beauty.

I will not say the fact that there are no European Union observers at an election means that it will not be fair and free.

Remember this: Anticipation is the ultimate power. Losers react; leaders anticipate.