“Tradition is the democracy of the dead” -G. K. Chesterton
“Peace should be the object of our desire, war looked upon but as a necessity to the end that by it God may deliver men from the necessity of war and preserve them in peace. For peace is not sought in order to rouse men to war, but war is waged that peace may be obtained. Therefore, in waging war, be a peacemaker, so that by conquering those whom you attack, you may lead them back to the advantages of peace.” -St. Augustine, Letters (To Boniface when on military service)
“The innermost meaning of wonder is fulfilled in a deepened sense of mystery. It does not end in doubt, but is the awakening of the knowledge that being, qua being, is mysterious and inconceivable, and that it is a mystery in the full sense of the word: neither a dead end, nor a contradiction, nor even something impenetrable and dark. Rather, mystery means that a reality cannot be comprehended because its light is ever-flowing, unfathomable, and inexhaustible…. Only a being who does not know fully can wonder.” -Josef Pieper, Leisure the Basis of Culture
“The clergy are those particular people within the whole Church who have been specially trained and set aside to look after what concerns us as creatures who are going to live forever: and we are asking them to do a quite different job for which they have not been trained. The job is really on us, on the laymen. The application of Christian principles, say, to trade unionism or education, must come from Christian trade unionists and Christian schoolmasters: just as Christian literature comes from Christian novelists and dramatists — not from the bench of bishops getting together and trying to write plays and novels in their spare time.” -C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
“Faith declares what the senses do not declare, but not the contrary of what they see. It is above them, not contrary to them.” -Pascal Pensees
“We attain to heaven by using this world well, though it is to pass away; we perfect our nature, not by undoing it, but by adding to it what is more than nature, and directing it towards aims higher than its own.” -John Henry Cardinal Newman, The Idea of a University
“I claim that peace is neither valid nor firm unless the war which preceded it was not only unavoidable but loyally fought. Now I know of at least two loyalties and the second is no less indispensable than the first. The first loyalty consists in treating our adversaries and enemies as men, in respecting their moral persons, in respecting through our behavior towards them the obligations of moral law and, throughout the heat of battle and the animosity of the struggle, in keeping to cleanliness, probity, justice, loyalty, in remaining honest and abstaining from falsehood. This first loyalty is mainly moral. I will call it personal loyalty. I admit a second loyalty on which the attention of moralists centers far less. This second loyalty is mental as well as moral and consists in treating war itself — once war has become inevitable — as war and not as peace. It consists plainly in this: when one fights, to fight in good earnest. It consists in waging war earnestly, according to its fashion, as all work must be done, earnestly…. It consists in fighting hand to hand … in not committing the falsehood of waging war as though it were peace, this being a moral falsehood and also a mental falsehood, like all willful mistakes of judgment and attitude. I call this real loyalty.” Charley Peguy, “War and Peace”