What you have been obliged to discover by yourself leaves a path in your mind which you can use again when the need arises.

The Greeks possessed a knowledge of human nature we seem hardly able to attain to without passing through the strengthening hibernation of a new barbarism.

One might call habit a moral friction: something that prevents the mind from gliding over things but connects it with them and makes it hard for it to free itself from them.

Erudition can produce foliage without bearing fruit.

There exists a species of transcendental ventriloquism by means of which men can be made to believe that something said on earth comes from Heaven.

Just as the performance of the vilest and most wicked deeds requires spirit and talent, so even the greatest demand a certain insensitivity which under other circumstances we would call stupidity.

If there were only turnips and potatoes in the world, someone would complain that plants grow the wrong way.

Many things about our bodies would not seem to us so filthy and obscene if we did not have the idea of nobility in our heads.

To read means to borrow; to create out of one s readings is paying off one's debts.

Once we know our weaknesses they cease to do us any harm.

He who understands the wise is wise already.

Love is not the absence of logicbut logic examined and recalculatedheated and curved to fitinside the contours of the heart

Fear has made them sloppy. The world teeters at a precipe. All scared to take a step in case they put a foot into empty air. The instinct of self-preservation. It can destroy a man's efficiency.

Positive affirmation, positive lifestyle.

The only good reason to have money is this: so that you can tell any SOB in the world to go to hell.

God is usually on the side of big squadrons and against little ones.

The theory of the indirect approach operates on the line of least expectation.

I don't want anything given to me.

It's more fun to color outside the lines.

I just became fascinated with how complex and unlikely the universe is and life is and Catholicism gives me an answer to that.

The idea of sitting at home, not making music, just makes me want to throw up.