There are no lost causes because there are no gained causes.

Politics moves upward into ethics, and ethics ascends to theology.

The Secular City, having legislated and litigated itself out of any entanglement with the City of God, would be a hell upon earth .

Not by force of arms are civilizations held together, but by subtle threads of moral and intellectual principle.

Humility, which Burke ranked high among the virtues, is the only effectual restraint upon this congenital vanity; yet our world has nearly forgotten the nature of humility. Submission to the dictates of humility formerly was made palatable to man by the doctrine of grace; that elaborate doctrine has been overwhelmed by modern presumption.

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.

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