"If he does really think that there is no distinction between virtue and vice, why sir, when he leaves our house let us count our spoons."

-Samuel Johnson, quoted in Boswell's "Life of Johnson", 1769)

The devil Screwtape in "The Screwtape Letters" (C.S. Lewis):

I have been writing hitherto on the assumption that the people in the next pew afford no rational ground for disappointment. Of course, if they do- if the patient knows that the woman with the absurd hat is a fanatical bridgeplayer or the man with squeaky boots a miser and an extortioner- then your task is so much the easier. All you then have to do is to keep out of his mind the question "If I, being what I am, can consider that I am in some sense a Christian, why should the different vices of those people in the next pew prove that their religion is mere hypocrisy and convention?" You may ask whether it is possible to keep such an obvious thought from occurring even to a human mind. It is, Wormwood, it is! Handle him properly and it simply won't come into his head. He has not been anything like long enough with the Enemy to have any real humility yet. What he says, even on his knees, about his own sinfulness is all parrot talk. At bottom, he still believes he has run up a very favourable credit balance in the Enemy's ledger by allowing himself to be converted, and thinks that he is showing great humility and condescension in going to church with these 'smug,' commonplace neighbours at all. Keep him in that state of mind as long as you can."

"In making scientific discoveries man patently reveals his ability to see beyond what is immediately given in the physical. Because this ability of man is metaphysical, the metaphysics of discovery imposes the rediscovery of metaphysics."

-Stanley L. Jaki: "The Absolute Beneath the Relative and Other Essays"

"[My sister] wants me to tell you that I'm a lazy little girl, but this isn't true because I work all day long playing tricks on my poor little sisters."

 -St. Therese of Lisieux, age 4, in a letter to her sister's friend. :-)  (Her first letter, incidentally)

"...the ability of the Professionally Offended to take offense where none was offered is really a kind of social theft. (Theft is taking something that was not offered.)"

-Mike Flynn

“Am I hideous, Jane?"
"Very, sir: you always were, you know.”

-Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte

“No sight so sad as that of a naughty child,” he began, “especially a naughty little girl.  Do you know where the wicked go after death?”
“They go to hell,” was my ready and orthodox answer.
“And what is hell?  Can you tell me that?”
“A pit full of fire.”
“And should you like to fall into that pit, and to be burning there for ever?”
“No, sir.”
“What must you do to avoid it?”
I deliberated a moment; my answer, when it did come, was objectionable: “I must keep in good health, and not die.”

Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte

"[T]he existence and prestige of the Church prevented society from being totalitarian, prevented the omnicompetent state, and preserved liberty in the only way that liberty can be preserved, by maintaining in society an organization which could stand up against the state.” 

-A.D. Linsday, The Modern Democratic States

[H/T Mike Flynn]

Mark Shea on the name "Easter"

"But what about the very name 'Easter'? It comes from the pagan goddess 'Eostre'!"

Right you are. And 'Friday' comes from "Freya's Day". Does that make you a Norse pagan who worships Freya when you say, "Thank God it's Friday?" No it makes you an inheritor of a Germanic language group that didn't bother to change the names of some of its days. But in all Latin language groups (and beyond) what we English speakers call "Easter" is known by some variation on Pascha, or (as it's translated into English) "Passover". Why? Because Jesus was crucified on the eve of Passover and is our Passover sacrifice

-Mark Shea

'You are a slow learner, Winston,' said O'Brien gently.

'How can I help it?' he blubbered. 'How can I help seeing what is in front of my eyes? Two and two are four.'

'Sometimes, Winston. Sometimes they are five. Sometimes they are three. Sometimes they are all of them at once. You must try harder. It is not easy to become sane.'

[H/T Dale Price]

So Rex was sent to Farm Street to Father Mowbray, a priest renowned for his triumphs with obdurate catechumens. After the third interview he came to tea with Lady Machmain.

"Well, how do you find my future son-in-law?"

"He's the most difficult convert I have ever met."

"Oh dear, I thought he was going to make it so easy."

"That's exactly it. I can't get anywhere near him. He doesn't seem to have the least intellectual curiosity or natural piety.

"The first day I wanted to find out what sort of religious life he had till now, so I asked him what he meant by prayer. He said: 'I don't mean anything. You tell me.'  I tried to, in a  few words, and he said: 'Right. So much for prayer. What's the next thing?' I gave him the catechism to take away. Yesterday I asked him whether Our Lord had more than one nature. He said: 'Just as many as you say, Father.'

"Then again I asked him: 'Supposing the Pope looked up and saw a cloud and said "It's going to rain," would that be bound to happen?' 'Oh, yes, Father.' 'But supposing it didn't?' He thought a moment and said, 'I suppose it would be sort of raining spiritually, only we were too sinful to see it."

-Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh

[Note: Rex Mottram in this scene is *not* a model for Catholics. lol. But this is a humorous passage, so I wanted to post it.]

"The average American is physically, biologically, psychologically and neurologically unable to do anything worthwhile before he has a cup of coffee!"

"If at all possible, the priest should make his daily Holy Hour before celebrating his Mass. Now that the Church's regulations on the pre-Eucharistic fast have been modified, he will be well advised to take a cup of coffee before he starts. The average American is physically, biologically, psychologically and neurologically unable to do anything worthwhile before he has a cup of coffee! And that goes for prayer too. Even sisters in convents whose rules were written before electric percolators were developed would do well to update their procedures. Let them have coffee before meditation."

-Venerable Fulton Sheen, The Priest Is Not His Own