A man without God is not like a cake without raisins; he is like the cake without the flour and milk; he lacks the essential ingredients of happiness.
A robber is free to ransack a house when the owners are away, but it is absurd to say that he loves the owners because he is free to steal. The purest liberty is that which is given, not that which is taken.
All pagan religions begin with the teachings of adults, but Christianity begins with the birth of a child.
Any civilization that denies free will is, generally, a civilization that is already disgusted with the choices of its freedom, because it has brought unhappiness upon itself.
As a matter of fact, men and women are not equal in sex; they are quite unequal, and it is only because they are unequal that they complement one another. Each has a superiority of function.
As evil men feel their guilt more in the presence of an innocent babe than in the companionship of those who are wicked like themselves, so he who loves God is the most deeply burdened with the sense of his own unworthiness.
As life must be nourished, defended, and preserved; so freedom must be repurchased in each generation.
As the sun shines on mud and hardens it, and shines on wax and softens it, so too this great miracle of Our Blessed Lord hardened some unto unbelief, and softened others unto belief.
Behind many contemporary affirmations of the freedom of love is a false rationalization, for although love involves freedom, not all freedom involves love.
Belief in immortality dies easily in those who live in such a way that they cannot face the prospect of a judgment.
Broadmindedness, when it means indifference to right and wrong, eventually ends in a hatred of what is right.
Christianity, unlike any other religion in the world, begins with catastrophe and defeat. Sunshine religions and psychological inspirations collapse in calamity and wither in adversity.
Evil men, in order to appear innocent, load accusations of guilt on those whom they have wronged.
God prefers a loving sinner to a loveless 'saint.' Love can be trained; pride cannot.
Human opinion can give only conflicting, contrary, and contradictory answers.
Ice deserves no credit for being cold, nor fire for being hot; it is only those who have the possibility of choice that can be praised for their acts.
If all mankind needed was a teacher, man would long ago have been holy, for he has had teachers from the Indian sages up to this very hour.
In the case of Socrates, [his] executioner wept over the executed, but here, it is the [Christ] who is to be executed who weeps over the executioners. Such is the difference between a philosopher and God.
It has been said it makes no difference what you believe; it all depends on how you act. This is psychological nonsense, for a man acts out of his beliefs.
It may very well be that the Communists...are closer to [Christ] than those who see Him as a sentimentalist and a vague moral reformer.
Justice makes the wrongdoer see the injustice in the violation of a law; mercy makes him see it in the sufferings and misery he caused those who love him deeply.
Man, by making himself a god, discovers the painful agony that he is not God.
Many would say later on, 'We want religion, but no creeds.' This is like saying we want healing, but no science of medicine; music, but no rules of music; history, but no documents.
Men talk most about health when they are unhealthy. So too they talk most about freedom when they are in danger of losing it or when they are enslaved.
Miracles are not necessarily a cure for unbelief. If the will is perverse, all the evidence in the world would not convince, not even a resurrection from the dead.
No one hates Buddha; he is dead. But hatred against [Christ] would live on, because he lives....
No other teacher in the world [but Jesus] ever said that it would take a violent death to clarify his teachings.
One way to make enemies and antagonize people is to challenge the spirit of the world.
Our inner consciences scream with neuroses and psychoses, too, when we do not freely tend to the supreme goal for which we are made, namely, the life and truth and love that are God.
Right is still right if nobody is right, and wrong is still wrong if everybody is wrong.
Satan has very little trouble with those who do not believe in him; they are already on his side.
Skepticism is never certain of itself, being less a firm intellectual position than a pose to justify bad behavior.
Some religions draw by force of arms; [Jesus Christ] would draw by force of love.
The Church will…be intolerant about her creed, and be ready to die for it, for she fears not those who kill the body, but rather those who have the power to cast body and soul into hell.
The first lesson from Cana is: 'Aid yourself, and Heaven will aid you.' Our Lord could have produced wine out of nothing, as He had made the world from nothing, but He willed that the wine servants bring their pots and fill them with water.
The good repent on knowing their sin; the evil become angry when discovered.
The holier and purer a life, the more it would attract malignity and hate.
The liberty of love, therefore, is not license. Freedom implies not just a mere choice but also responsibility for choice.
The Light can shine in darkness, but the darkness does not comprehend it.
The man who knows he is a miserable, unhappy sinner...is closer to peace, joy and salvation than he knows.
The more base and corrupt a man, the more ready is he to charge crimes to others. Those who want credit for good character foolishly believe that the best way to get it is to denounce others.
The preservation of civilization and culture is now one with the preservation of religion. If the anti-God forces of the world conquer, culture and civilization will disappear, and we will have to start all over again.
The sculptor works on marble, the painter on canvas, the machinist on matter, but none of them can create. They bring existing things into new combinations, but nothing else. Creation belongs to God alone.
The Son of God became a stumbling block when he humiliated Himself to the human level, taking on the form and habit of man. It is hard on the intelligentsia to believe that greatness can be so little.
The world may disagree with the Church, but the world knows very definitely with what it is disagreeing….
There are not a hundred people in America who hate the Catholic Church. There are millions of people who hate what they wrongly believe to be the Catholic Church....
Those who call black black, and white white, are sentenced for intolerance. Only the grays live.
To believe in the brotherhood of man without the fatherhood of God would make men a race of bastards.
Too many people get credit for being good, when they are only being passive. They are too often praised for being broadminded when they are so broadminded they can never make up their minds about anything.
Totalitarians are fond of saying that Christianity is the enemy of the State--a euphemistic way of saying an enemy of themselves.
Two classes of people make up the world: those who have found God, and those who are looking for Him—thirsting, hungering, seeking!
Very few people believe in the devil these days, which suits the devil very well. He is always helping to circulate the news of his own death.
Wait not until your hidden sins come out as psychoses and neuroses and compulsions. Get rid of them at their sources. Repent! Purge! Evil that can be put into statistics, or that can be locked in jails, is too late to remedy.
We must not expect God to transform us without our bringing something to be transformed.
Western man got rid of God in order to make himself God, and then he became bored with his own divinity.
When a democracy loses its moral sense, it can vote itself right out of democracy.
When a man has lived in a dark cave for years, his eyes cannot stand the light of the sun; so the man who refuses to repent turns against mercy.
Without justice, mercy would be indifference to wrong: without mercy, justice would be vindictive.
Yet ever since the days of Adam, man has been hiding from God and saying, 'God is hard to find.'