Michael Finale > Michael's Quotes

“Understanding is the reward of faith. Therefore, seek not to understand that you may believe, but believe that you may understand.”
― St. Augustine of Hippo

“And men go abroad to admire the heights of mountains, the mighty waves of the sea, the broad tides of rivers, the compass of the ocean, and the circuits of the stars, yet pass over the mystery of themselves without a thought.”
― St. Augustine of Hippo, Confessions

“Sorrow can be alleviated by good sleep, a bath and a glass of wine”
― St.Thomas Aquinas

“A society that puts equality—in the sense of equality of outcome—ahead of freedom will end up with neither equality nor freedom. The use of force to achieve equality will destroy freedom, and the force, introduced for good purposes, will end up in the hands of people who use it to promote their own interests.”
― Thomas Sowell, The Quest for Cosmic Justice

“The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“When you arise in the morning think of what a privilege it is to be alive, to think, to enjoy, to love ...”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“Hearing nuns' confessions is like being stoned to death with popcorn.”
― Fulton J. Sheen

“I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.

A tree whose hungry mouth is pressed
Against the earth's sweet flowing breast;

A tree that looks at God all day
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;

A tree that may in summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;

Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.

Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.”
― Joyce Kilmer, Trees & Other Poems

“If you believe what you like in the Gospel, and reject what you don't like, it is not the Gospel you believe, but yourself.”
― Augustine

“He became what we are so that he might make us what he is.”
― Athanasius

“Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.”
― G.K. Chesterton, Alarms and Discursions

“The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because generally they are the same people.”
― G.K. Chesterton

“Do not be so open-minded that your brains fall out.”
― G.K. Chesterton

“It [feminism] is mixed up with a muddled idea that women are free when they serve their employers but slaves when they help their husbands.”
― G.K. Chesterton

“The word "good" has many meanings. For example, if a man were to shoot his grandmother at a range of five hundred yards, I should call him a good shot, but not necessarily a good man.”
― G.K. Chesterton

“There are those who hate Christianity and call their hatred an all-embracing love for all religions.”
― G.K. Chesterton

“Tolerance is the virtue of the man without convictions.”
― G.K. Chesterton

“The main point of Christianity was this: that Nature is not our mother: Nature is our sister.”
― G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

“When men choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing, they then become capable of believing in anything.”
― G.K. Chesterton

“The object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid.”
― G.K. Chesterton

“The men who really believe in themselves are all in lunatic asylums.”
― G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

“There is a road from the eye to the heart that does not go through the intellect.”
― G.K. Chesterton

“Sometimes the only way the good Lord can get into some hearts is to break them.”
― Fulton J. Sheen

“The reason why the soul not only travels securely when it thus travels in the dark, but makes even greater progress, is this: In general the soul makes greater progress when it least thinks so, yea, most frequently when it imagines that it is losing. Having never before experienced the present novelty which dazzles it, and disturbs its former habits, it considers itself as losing, rather than as gaining ground, when it sees itself lost in a place it once knew, and in which it delighted, traveling by a road it knows not, and in which it has no pleasure. As a traveler into strange countries goes by ways strange and untried, relying on information derived from others, and not upon any knowledge of his own—it is clear that he will never reach a new country but by new ways which he knows not, and by abandoning those he knew—so in the same way the soul makes the greater progress when it travels in the dark, not knowing the way. But inasmuch as God Himself is here the guide of the soul in its blindness, the soul may well exult and say, “In darkness and in safety,” now that it has come to a knowledge of its state.”
― St. John of the Cross, Dark Night of the Soul

“Unless there is a Good Friday in your life, there can be no Easter Sunday.”
― Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen

“To tell a woman who is forty, "You look like sixteen," is boloney. The blarney way of saying it is "Tell me how old you are, I should like to know at what age women are the most beautiful.”
― Fulton J. Sheen

“For what am I to myself without You, but a guide to my own downfall?”
― Saint Augustine of Hippo, Confessions

“We no longer dare to believe in beauty and we make of it a mere appearance in order the more easily to dispose of it. Our situation today shows that beauty demands for itself at least as much courage and decision as do truth and goodness, and she will not allow herself to be separated and banned from her two sisters without taking them along with herself in an act of mysterious vengeance. We can be sure that whoever sneers at her name as if she were the ornament of a bourgeois past -- whether he admits it or not -- can no longer pray and soon will no longer be able to love.”
― Hans Urs von Balthasar, Seeing the Form