But nature gives most of her evidence in answer to the questions we ask her. Here, as in the courts, the character of the evidence depends on the shape of the examination, and a good cross-examiner can do wonders. He will not indeed elicit falsehoods from an honest witness. But, in relation to the total truth in the witness’s mind, the structure of the examination is like a stencil. It determines how much of that total truth will appear and what pattern it will suggest.

-C.S. Lewis, The Discarded Image

[H/T Rebekah Valerius]

Apart from sin, anxiety is the soul's greatest enemy. The devil does not hesitate to fish in troubled waters....When you become aware of a growing anxiety, commend yourself to God, and make up your mind not to take any steps until your mind is calm again....Examine whether your heart is under complete control. If it has strayed, quietly lead it back to the presence of God, placing all your hopes in obedience to his holy will.

-St. Francis de Sales

"...nothing would be done at all, if a man waited till he could do it so well that no one could find fault with it."

-Bl. John Henry Newman, Lectures on Present Position of Catholics in England (1851)

[I]t may be said that the chief purpose of life, for any one of us, is to increase according to our capacity our knowledge of God by all the means we have, and to be moved by it to praise and thanks. To do as we say in the Gloria in Excelsis: Laudamus te, benedicamus te, adoramus te, glorificamus te, gratias agimus tibi proper magnam gloriam tuam. We praise you, we call you holy, we worship you, we proclaim your glory, we thank you for the greatness of your splendour.

And in moments of exaltation we may call on all created things to join in our chorus, speaking on their behalf, as is done in Psalm 148, and in The Song of the Three Children in Daniel II. PRAISE THE LORD...all mountains and hills, all orchards and forests, all things that creep and birds on the wing.

-Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, Letter 310

[The Church] was not intended by Our Lord to be static or remain in perpetual childhood; but to be a living organism (likened to a plant), which develops and changes in externals by the interaction of its bequeathed divine life and history- the particular circumstances of the world into which it is set. There is no resemblance between the 'mustard-seed' and the full-grown tree. For those living in the days of its branching growth the Tree is the thing, for the history of a living thing is part of its life, and the history of a divine thing is sacred. The wise may know that it began with a seed, but it is vain to try and dig it up, for it no longer exists, and the virtue and powers that it had now reside in the Tree. very good: but in husbandry the authorities, the keepers of the Tree, must look after it, according to such wisdom as they possess, prune it, remove cankers, rid it of parasites, and so forth. (With trepidation, knowing how little their knowledge of growth is!) But they will certainly do harm, if they are obsessed with the desire of going back to the seed or even to the first youth of the plant when it was (as they imagine) pretty and unafflicted by evils.

-Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, Letter 306

"But in fact Our Lord has never made any promises regarding the triumph of Christianity on earth- on the contrary. If we expect to see His cause triumph here , His own words should warn us: 'The Son of Man, when He cometh, shall He find, think you, faith on earth?' He did not tell us the answer."

-Sigrid Undset, St. Catherine of Siena

(H/T Leila Miller)

"Writing is the best way of working out your ideas; so if you wait until you know exactly what you want to say before writing, you will miss the best way of determining exactly what you want to say."

-The Maverick Philosopher

(H/T Mike Flynn)

"The Mass isn't boring; you're boring!"

"The Mass isn't boring; you're boring! Guess what? If you're not paying attention and have no interest in anything that's going on, you're going to be bored. What a surprise! Think about your own boredom. Yes, you're boring."

-Tom Wilson (aka "Biff Tannen" from Back to the Future)

[Said in a light-hearted way (though making a serious point) in this episode of Catholic Answers Live ("The Healing Power of Laughter") in an interview with Patrick Coffin (starting about the 21:26 mark)]

Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Dion DiMucci in a recent interview to Forbes Magazine

Clash: What does fame do to somebody?

DiMucci: I'll give you a real true answer. It's a little long. I'm going to say it in a Bronx way, because I'm not an academic or intellectual. I started reading St. Augustine and Thomas Aquinas. If you don't have God in your life, you have to fill up on something. And you usually reach for the four great substitutes, the classical addictions: wealth, pleasure, power and honor. So you try to fill yourself up. You can see that there are some people who have all of that, and I'm one of them. I acquired the wealth, I have the girl of my dreams, I have position, I had a contract with Columbia Records for half a million dollars - guaranteed. That's 1961, that's a lot of money for a kid from the Bronx. And honor. I'm from the streets. It's all about reputation and respect. But those things, if you acquire them, still make you feel an emptiness - you want more. Because it's not God. Those things - fame included - don't satisfy the soul, the center of your being. Not that they're not good - we're not Puritans here - but once you have God in your life, he shapes your desire for those things. With God, you have this healthy detachment from thinking those things will make you happy. Does that make sense?

It is stupid of modern civilization to have given up believing in the devil, when he is the only explanation of it.

-Msgr. Ronald Knox

The typical modern man practically never thinks about sex. He dreams of it, of course, by day and by night; he craves for it; he pictures it, is stimulated or depressed by it, drools over it. But this frothing, steaming activity is not thinking. Drooling is not thinking, picturing is not thinking, craving is not thinking, dreaming is not thinking. Thinking means bringing the power of the mind to bear: thinking about sex means striving to see sex in its innermost reality and in the function it is meant to serve.

-Frank Sheed