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.

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.

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.

Just open your eyes! I thought. These desperate poor are your gurus.

All men are children, and of one family. The same tale sends them all to bed, and wakes them in the morning.

Do you wish to rise? Begin by descending. You plan a tower that will pierce the clouds? Lay first the foundation of humility.

I want certain things out of life. I want my grand kids, my kids' kids, being able to inherit what I've worked so hard to build.

I feel like something important has happened to me. Is this possible?

..remember that under our institutions there was no middle ground for the negro race between slavery and equal citizenship.

Who knows what goes on in the mind of a cat?

I like actors very much, but to marry one would be like marrying your brother. You look too much alike in the mirror.

My mother's in my life, but at the time you imagine your mom passing away, not being there ... as a kid you try to think of something that hurts you the most ... It was just a tool [in "Hardball"].

Readiness to answer all questions is the infallible sign of stupidity.