“Christian faith undercuts the urge to fix everything on our own, through conviction of the final helplessness of man and confidence in the providence of God--through certainty that only God can set...”

“When, despite considerable intelligence, a thinker cannot think straight, it becomes very likely that he cannot face his thoughts.”

“It is hard enough to face the moral law even with the revelation that the divine justice and divine mercy are conjoined. It offends our pride to be forgiven, terrifies it to surrender control.”

“Trying to understand man without recognizing him as imago Dei is like trying to understand a bas-relief without recognizing it as a carving.”

“Yet our common moral knowledge is as real as arithmetic, and probably just as plain. Paradoxically, maddeningly, we appeal to it even to justify wrongdoing; rationalization is the homage paid by si...”

“Those are just platitudes. Everyone has his own idea of "playing fair." "Does he? Try making up your own idea of what's fair--say, "giving the greatest rewards to the laziest workers"--and see how ...”

“The study of Nature makes a man at last as remorseless as Nature.”

“I told her how many things on earth have a fixed colour. Let us say, the green leaves. In our eyes, a red or a yellow leaf is beautiful. Even better if the leaf is shaded in several hues. So we pai...”

“The first objection is that it is rubbish to talk about natural meanings and purposes, because we merely imagine such things. According to the objector's way of thinking, meanings and purposes aren...”

“The sins of women and children, domestic servants and the weak, the poor and the ignorant, are the sins of the husbands and fathers, the masters, the strong and the rich and the educated.”

“I have always derived indescribable pleasure from leading a decent woman to the edge of sin and leaving her there to live between the temptation and the fear of that sin.”

“Told often enough that they are the source of sin, women may well begin feeling guilty as they accept the necessity for penance. Taught effectively enough that they are irrelevant to the important ...”