Not by force of arms are civilizations held together, but by subtle threads of moral and intellectual principle.

Men cannot improve a society by setting fire to it: they must seek out its old virtues, and bring them back into the light.

If you want to have order in the commonwealth, you first have to have order in the individual soul.

I am a conservative. Quite possibly I am on the losing side; often I think so. Yet, out of a curious perversity I had rather lose with Socrates, let us say, than win with Lenin.

We ought not to endeavor to revise history according to our latter day notions of what things ought to have been, or upon the theory that the past is simply a reflection of the present

Every right is married to a duty, every freedom owes a corresponding responsibility.

If the state - and within the state, the judiciary particularly - harasses and undermines the Church , in any society the state undoes itself.

Sudden and slashing reforms are as perilous as sudden and slashing surgery.

Real literature is something much better than a harmless instrument for getting through idle hours. The purpose of great literature is to help us to develop into full human beings.

A just government maintains a healthy tension between the claims of authority and the claims of liberty.

The Secular City, having legislated and litigated itself out of any entanglement with the City of God, would be a hell upon earth .

Don't explain your philosophy. Embody it.

The moment you vote, you are a citizen. But moment you make your vote public, you are a politician.

Middle age is when you're sitting at home on a Saturday night and the telephone rings and you hope it isn't for you.

Our strife pertains to ourselves-to the passing generations of men-and it can without convulsion be hushed forever with the passing of one generation.

It is quite easy to remark the absurdities and contradictions of a country's social system from outside its borders, but very difficult if one has been brought up in it.

How can you hide from what never goes away? --Heraclitus

The post office has a great charm at one point of our lives. When you have lived to my age, you will begin to think letters are never worth going through the rain for.

You can never be more outside of you, than what's in you

Knowledge is grateful to the understanding, as light to the eyes.

Fancy brings us as many vain hopes as idle fears.