If religion meant anything at all it meant that the whole man worshiped, mind and body alike . . . There was some reassurance when I discovered that the good, brilliant, acutely sane Ronald Knox had found himself running, on several occasions, to visit the Blessed Sacrament.

-Alec Guinness

John Henry Newman on "Poisoning the Wells"

(Incidentally, with this passage Newman apparently coined the term as applied to this particular fallacy)

[...] I wish to impute nothing worse to Kingsley than that he has been furiously carried away by his feelings. But what shall I say of the upshot of all this talk of my economies and equivocations and the like? What is the precise work which it is directed to effect? I am at war with him; but there is such a thing as legitimate warfare: war has its laws; there are things which may fairly be done, and things which may not be done. I say it with shame and with stern sorrow;—he has attempted a great transgression; he has attempted (as I may call it) to poison the wells [...]

[...] what I insist upon here, now that I am bringing this portion of my discussion to a close, is this unmanly attempt of his, in his concluding pages, to cut the ground from under my feet;—to poison by anticipation the public mind against me, John Henry Newman, and to infuse into the imaginations of my readers, suspicion and mistrust of every thing that I may say in reply to him. This I call poisoning the wells.

"I am henceforth in doubt and fear," he says, "as much as any honest man can be, concerning every word Dr. Newman may write. How can I tell that I shall not be the dupe of some cunning equivocation? ... What proof have I, that by 'mean it? I never said it!' Dr. Newman does not signify, 'I did not say it, but I did mean it'?"

Well, I can only say, that, if his taunt is to take effect, I am but wasting my time in saying a word in answer to his foul calumnies; and this is precisely what he knows and intends to be its fruit. I can hardly get myself to protest against a method of controversy so base and cruel, lest in doing so, I should be violating my self-respect and self-possession; but most base and most cruel it is. We all know how our imagination runs away with us, how suddenly and at what a pace;—the saying, "Caesar's wife should not be suspected," is an instance of what I mean. The habitual prejudice, the humour of the moment, is the turning-point which leads us to read a defence in a good sense or a bad. We interpret it by our antecedent impressions. The very same sentiments, according as our jealousy is or is not awake, or our aversion stimulated, are tokens of truth or of dissimulation and pretence. There is a story of a sane person being by mistake shut up in the wards of a Lunatic Asylum, and that, when he pleaded his cause to some strangers visiting the establishment, the only remark he elicited in answer was, "How naturally he talks! you would think he was in his senses." Controversies should be decided by the reason; is it legitimate warfare to appeal to the misgivings of the public mind and to its dislikings? Any how, if Mr. Kingsley is able thus to practise upon my readers, the more I succeed, the less will be my success. If I am natural, he will tell them, "Ars est celare artem;" if I am convincing, he will suggest that I am an able logician; if I show warmth, I am acting the indignant innocent; if I am calm, I am thereby detected as a smooth hypocrite; if I clear up difficulties, I am too plausible and perfect to be true. The more triumphant are my statements, the more certain will be my defeat.

-John Henry Newman, Apologia Pro Vita Sua (1864) [bold type emphasis mine]

"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