“A Catholic is a person who has plucked up courage to face the incredible and inconceivable idea that something else may be wiser than he is.”

We need to be reminded more than we need to be instructed.

O God of earth and altar, Bow down and hear our cry, Our earthly rulers falter, Our people drift and die; The walls of gold entomb us, The swords of scorn divide, Take not thy thunder from us, But take away our pride.

Right is Right even if nobody does it. Wrong is wrong even if everybody is wrong about it.

The riddles of God are more satisfying than the solutions of man.

Modern toleration is really a tyranny. It is a tyranny because it is a silence.

Truth can understand error, but error cannot understand truth.

Journalism is popular, but it is popular mainly as fiction. Life is one world, and life seen in the newspapers is another.

The whole pleasure of marriage is that it is a perpetual crisis.

A dead thing goes with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it.

To love means loving the unlovable. To forgive means pardoning the unpardonable. Faith means believing the unbelievable. Hope means hoping when everything seems hopeless.

The real great man is the man who makes every man feel great.

Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to that arrogant oligarchy who merely happen to be walking around.

Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed.

The past is not what it was.

Science must not impose any philosophy, any more than the telephone must tell us what to say.

Nothing taken for granted; everything received with gratitude; everything passed on with grace.

Courage is indispensible because in politics not life but the world is at stake.

A man of faith is also full of courage.

The strongest people find the courage and caring to help others, even if they are going through their own storm.

In my experience, men who respond to good fortune with modesty and kindness are harder to find than those who face adversity with courage.

To be sure, we are still aware that thinking calls not only for intelligence and profundity but above all for courage.

Lose not courage, lose not faith, go forward.

Courage consists not in hazarding without fear; but being resolutely minded in a just cause.

Dare to know! Have the courage to use your own intelligence!