Even the suicide desires his own good: he wrongly imagines that he would be better off dead. The moral problem is not that we love ourselves but that we love ourselves the wrong way.

When, despite considerable intelligence, a thinker cannot think straight, it becomes very likely that he cannot face his thoughts.

It is hard enough to face the moral law even with the revelation that the divine justice and divine mercy are conjoined. It offends our pride to be forgiven, terrifies it to surrender control.

Trying to understand man without recognizing him as imago Dei is like trying to understand a bas-relief without recognizing it as a carving.

The goods of fidelity, for example, are plain and concrete to the man who has not strayed, but they are faint, like mathematical abstractions, to the one who is addicted to other men's wives.

The problem was not that they failed to find these principles written upon their hearts, but that they could not bring themselves to attend closely to the inscription.

Or perhaps the syndrome we are witnessing is preemptive capitulation: If we reduce our conscience to rubble before the bad men get here, they will have nothing to destroy.

If he makes humanity God and yet cries out against God's inhumanity, it is clear who has really been accused.

We are losing our common vocabulary, built over thousands of years to help and delight and instruct us, for the sake of what we take to be the new technology's virtues.

Anything that lives here has to be just as harsh and determined as the sun, born of a fiery stubbornness that is either extremely brave or extremely stupid.

The man whose conscience never troubles him must have it pretty well trained.

Every worker should know that by working, he is releasing the nature of God in him. He is becoming creative just like God is creative.

The directors I respect are the ones who have a collaborative attitude, who collaborate with actors.

I wake up every morning at nine and grab for the morning paper. Then I look at the obituary page. If my name is not on it, I get up.

Elites play the role today that landlords played under feudalism. They levy interest and financial fees that are like a tax, to support what the classical economists called "unproductive activity."

In the distance someone is singing.

Do what you love and try not to look at what other people occupy themselves with.

Very often, people who actually pick up a book of mine for the first time are kind of surprised. And I get these letters saying, well, who knew that you were good, you know?