"The imposition of P.C. has no logical end because feeling better about one’s self by confessing other people’s sins... is an addictive pleasure the appetite for which grows with each satisfaction. The more fault I find in thee, the holier (or, at least, the trendier) I am than thou."

-Angelo M. Codevilla

(H/T Mike Flynn)

"During the patriarchal Victorian/Edwardian Age, the Church was accused of being 'too feminine'. During the age of feminism, the Church was accused of being 'too patriarchal.' She is always accused of being the opposite of what the secular society reveres."

-Mike Flynn

About 'escapism', never let that flea stick in your ear. I was liberated from it once & for all when a friend said 'These critics are v. sensitive to the least hint of Escape. Now what class of men wd. one expect to be thus worked-up about Escape- Jailers.'

-Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis, Volume 3 (To Arthur C. Clark, January 26, 1954)

...but in all collections of men, the straw and rubbish (as Lord Bacon says) float on the top, while gold and jewels sink and are hidden. Or, what is more apposite still, many men, or most men, are a compound of precious and worthless together, and their worthless swims, and their precious lies at the bottom.

Blessed John Henry Newman, Loss and Gain (1848)

So assiduous have [the media] been in seeking out anything that can pass for wrong-doing ...as the only salient feature of their candidacy that when real wrong-doing comes along it only looks like politics as usual.

-James Bowman (H/T Mike Flynn)

"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