Tom

“What he fervently believed in up to the end was success, the chief standard of 'good society' as he knew it... His conscience was indeed set at rest when he saw the zeal and eagerness with which 'good society' everywhere reacted as he did. He did not need to 'close his ears to the voice of conscience,' as the judgment has it, not because he had none, but because his conscience spoke with a 'respectable voice,' with the voice of respectable society around him.”
― Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil

“I'll tell you this. I've labored all my life. I've baked and brewed. I've woven, spun, and dyed. I've kept my husband's house and raised his young. And many other things besides. So where was time for holiness? What strength was left for faith? Let monks and nuns and priests have care of that. The dead shall rise? The Lord himself will sit as justicer in manor court? It may be true for all I know. But in the meanwhile bread, beer, work, and rest at night, they're truth enough for me.”
― Frederick Buechner, Godric

“There is one class of persons to which one speaks with difficulty, and another to which one speaks in vain. The second, more numerous and obstinate than may at first appear, because it represents a state of mind into which we are all prone through natural sloth to relapse, consists of those people who cannot believe that things will ever be very different from what they are at the moment. From time to time, under the influence perhaps of some persuasive write or speaker, they may have an instant of disquiet or hope; but an invincible sluggishness of imagination makes them go on behaving as if nothing would ever change. Those to whom one speaks with difficulty, but not perhaps in vain, are the persons who believe that great changes must come, but are not sure either of what is inevitable, or of what is probable, or of what is desirable.”
― T.S. Eliot, Christianity and Culture: The Idea of a Christian Society and Notes Towards the Definition of Culture

“[A]t the moments when the public's interest is aroused, the public is never well informed enough to have the right to an opinion.”
― T.S. Eliot, Christianity and Culture: The Idea of a Christian Society and Notes Towards the Definition of Culture