Happiness is essentially a gift; we are not the forgers of our own felicity.

... 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.

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

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.

Only when the lion is out of sight can you raise your fist at him.

Why not add benefits for making healthy food choices, provide a transition bonus for getting off food stamps, or increase job training opportunities and income - raising minimum wage?

The highway is alive tonight But nobody's kiddin' nobody about where it goes I'm sittin' down here in the campfire light With the ghost of old Tom Joad.

Give of thy love, nor wait to know the worth Of what thou lovest; and ask no returning. And wheresoe'er thy pathway leads on earth, There thou shalt find the lamp of love-light burning.

I never quit. I just got fired.

I think George Washington owned guns. I've never seen any contradiction with that.

Men will flee to caves in the rocks and to holes in the ground from dread of the LORD and the splendor of his majesty, when he rises to shake the earth.

The more successful you are, the more you need to learn and grow. Your commitment to learning has to be continuous and unrelenting.

I'm a very analytical person, a somewhat introspective person; that's the nature of the work I do.

To see her is to love her, And love but her forever; For nature made her what she is, And never made anither!