Mine was not an Enlightened mind, I now was aware: it was a Gothic mind, medieval in its temper and structure. I did not love cold harmony and perfect regularity of organization; what I sought was variety, mystery, tradition, the venerable, the awful.

Either order in the cosmos is real, or all is chaos. If we are adrift in chaos, then the fragile egalitarian doctrines and emancipating programs of the revolutionary reformers have no significance; for in a vortex of chaos, only force and appetite signify.

Men cannot improve a society by setting fire to it: they must seek out its old virtues, and bring them back into the light.

The conservative "thinks of political policies as intended to preserve order, justice, and freedom. The ideologue, on the contrary, thinks of politics as a revolutionary instrument for transforming society and even transforming human nature. In his march toward Utopia, the ideologue is merciless.

A society which denies the heart its role becomes, in very short order, a heartless society.

Ordinary human laws are the means - however imperfect - by which we express our understanding of the enduring moral law.

Sudden and slashing reforms are as perilous as sudden and slashing surgery.