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

Rousseau and his disciples were resolved to force men to be free; in most of the world, they triumphed; men are set free from family, church, town, class, guild; yet they wear, instead, the chains of the state, and they expire of ennui or stifling lone lines.

...ambition without pious restraint must end in failure, often involving in its ruin that beautiful reverence which solaces common men for the obscurity and poverty of their lot.

Despite much talk in this land about religious freedom, churches and their schools now confront grave difficulties.

Common Reader for Everyday Ecologists

Life is for action, and if we desire to know anything, we must make up our minds to be ignorant about much.

We cannot make a heaven on earth, though we may make a hell.