The good is that at which we aim, to be sure, and yet the good that we seek can only ever be asymptotically approached by avoiding the evil, which is always nearer and clearer.
Marx showed how a material transformation of the economic order could have enormous social and cultural effects. Forging the human order anew means building technologies that make it easier to live well.
Conservatives “lost the culture” not because they lost the battle of ideas, but because they lost the economy.
If we do not enter upon innovation with our eyes wide open to how our tools and machines will reshape us, we will become their slaves, not their masters.
If we believe in a human future, we must build it, not with kind words or tax credits, but with a serious program of technological development.
The devil owns the world anyway. Our job is to make it through the best we can.
The world will never starve for want of wonders; but only for want of wonder.
What if, instead of God’s Word being on trial, your heart was on trial?
The room was very full and who were they all?
Gertrude Stein, Selected Writings, p. 12
When in Rome, leave.
Strange thing, time. It weighs most on those who have it least.
I walked the streets and tasted the golden sun that lay across the city.
Chaim Potok, My Name Is Asher Lev, p. 274
They were in town now. Streets, houses, buildings shuttled past.
Ross Lockridge, Jr., Raintree County, p. 872
Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall.
Reality is harsh to the feet of shadows. But will you come?
C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, p. 39
“At present I would prefer not to be a little reasonable,” was his mildly cadaverous reply.
There’s nothing more permanent than a temporary fix.
There is no virtue or vice in a transitive verb.
The golden rule is that there are no golden rules.
But my body was like a harp and her words and gestures were like fingers running upon the wires.
The limit of multipolar traps as technology approaches infinity is “very bad”.
A life is measured by how it is lived for the sake of heaven.
Chaim Potok, My Name Is Asher Lev, p. 184
But what we called love down there was mostly the craving to be loved.
C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, p. 125
Life he saw as a ceaseless and courageous contest.
Jerry Allen, The Thunder and the Sunshine, p. 233
Into this grey lake plopped the thought, I know that man, don’t I?
Doris Lessing, Children of Violence, p. 264
Our complete inability to do what is right does not erase our obligation to do what is right.
Humility is thinking of yourself less, not thinking less of yourself.
Ah, happiness courts the light, so we deem the world is gay; but misery hides aloof, so we deem that misery there is none.
Encouragement is speaking fruitfully into the life of another.
…beasts from a private mythology.
Chaim Potok, My Name Is Asher Lev, p. 204
What defines a human artifact is its goal or purpose.
Nancy Pearcey, Saving Leonardo, p. 146
That is an eye drawing, Anna. Hands alone do not draw this way.
Chaim Potok, My Name Is Asher Lev, p. 207
It was all dry: all withered: all spent.
Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse, p. 224
It is a stronger angel, and therefore, when it falls, a fiercer devil.
C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, p. 105
The question is whether she is a grumbler, or only a grumble.
C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, p. 77
As long as the vision of heaven is always changing, the vision of earth will remain exactly the same.