Barry Anderberg

“if there were a genuine knight of faith in our midst we would be unlikely to recognize him: in terms of outward appearance, he is just another one of our neighbors taking a stroll in the park.”
― Jonathan Lear, Radical Hope: Ethics in the Face of Cultural Devastation

“The truth is, Socrates, that these regrets, and also the complaints about relations, are to be attributed to the same cause, which is not old age, but men's characters and tempers; for he who is of a calm and happy nature will hardly feel the pressure of age, but to him who is of an opposite disposition youth and age are equally a burden.”
― Plato, The Republic

“Father Norris Clarke, S.J., my philosophy professor at Fordham, went to Tibet once, on his own, just to converse with the Buddhist monks there. After a day of delightful conversation with the Buddhist abbot about their religions, the abbot said, “Obviously, our two religions are very different. But I think they are also very similar in their root in the depths of the human heart. I would like to test this idea, with your permission. Here are four of my priests who speak good English. I will ask you and them the same question and compare your answers. I have never asked them this question before. The question is this: What is the first requirement for any religion at all?” Father Clarke thought that was an excellent experiment, so he agreed. He and the four monks wrote their answers on five pieces of paper. When the papers were unfolded and read, the very same single word was found on all five of them. The word was gratitude.”
― Peter Kreeft, Forty Reasons I Am a Catholic

“I have come to think that care of the soul requires a high degree of resistance to the culture around us, simply because that culture is dedicated to values that have no concern for the soul.”
― Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander