Privilege, in any society, is the reward of duties performed.

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 .

Hope is the thing with feathers That perches in the soul And sings the tune without the words And never stops at all.

It is a simple tale, but its message is an enduring one: virtue and generosity will be rewarded in ways that one cannot know.

Capitalists desire purchasing power. Socialists lust for the power to plan society. Which is worse?

Innocence finds not near so much protection as guilt.

Talk to me about sadness. I talk about it too much in my own head but I never mind others talking about it either; I occasionally feel like I tremendously need others to talk about it as well.

The more I deal in it, the surer I am that human nature is all of the same critter, but that there's a heap of choice in the cuts.

Once in seven years I burn all my sermons; for it is a shame, if I cannot write better sermons now than I did seven years ago.

Talkin bout money we could have a conversation Top five tax bracket in the population

A vast black sleep falls over my life sleep, all hope sleep, all desire.

The desperate addict is closer to the heart of grace than the devout moralist.