Only the silent hear and those who do not remain silent do not hear.

... 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.

They surrounded me, bare me. Their fingers like tentacles and their desires like knives. Their fingers traced my secrets and their desires carved my skin.

Where are we going?" I asked. "The main road leads to all of the major kingdoms.""Not all of them, " said Amar.

Feeling leads to understanding, understanding leads to sympathizing, sympathizing leads to action, and with action, we can change the world. - Maya Dehlin

You can teach taste, editorial sense, but the ability to say something funny is something I've never been able to teach anyone.

If it is a woman's function to give, she must be replenished, too.

Fornication: but that was in another country; And besides, the wench is dead.

That best of blessings, a contented mind.

Muslim delegates concerned about rights in Palestine could have brought their enthusiasm closer to home by addressing the fate of black Christians being slaughtered and enslaved in the Sudan.

No matter what I do, I'm going to earn it.

Anyone who had ever read a novel knew that governesses were supposed to be meek and downtrodden.