Ian Maclay

“A religious philosophy, unless it is frankly to abandon nine-tenths of conduct to the powers of darkness, cannot admit the doctrine of a world of business and economic relations self-sufficient and divorced from ethics and religion.”
― RH Tawney

“The saints do not contemplate in order to know, but to love. And they love not for the sake of loving but for the love of Him that they love. It is because they are in love with God that they aspire to that union with God which love desires, loving themselves only for his sake. Their aim is not to exult in their own intelligence or nature and so abide in themselves: it is to do the will of Another and contribute to the good of Goodness. They do not seek for their soul. They lose it, they have it no more. If in entering into the mystery of divine sonship, in becoming somewhat of God himself they gain a transcendent personality, an independence and a liberty which nothing in this world can touch it is by forgetting all this so that not they but their Beloved lives in them.”
― RH Tawney

“What we need is not truths which will serve us, but a truth which we may serve.”
― RH Tawney

“The outer is ordained for the sake of the inner; economic goods are instrumental--sicut quaedam adminicula, quibus adjuvanur ad tendendum in beatitudinum. ‘It is lawful to desire temporal blessings, not putting them in the first place, as though setting up our rest in them, but regarding them as aids the blessedness, inasmuch as they support our corporal life and serve as instruments for acts of virtue.’ Riches, as St. Antonino says, exist for man not man for riches.”
― RH Tawney