Catholic doctrine and discipline may be walls; but they are the walls of a playground.
Adventure is the champagne of life.
Gluttony is a great fault; but we do not necessarily dislike a glutton. We only dislike the glutton when he becomes a gourmet-that is, we only dislike him when he not only wants the best for himself, but knows what is best for other people.
Virtue is not the absence of vices or the avoidance of moral dangers; virtue is a vivid and separate thing, like pain or a particular smell.
The more I considered Christianity, the more I found that while it had established a rule and order, the chief aim of that order was to give room for good things to run wild.
Time and again, the Faith has to all appearances gone to the dogs. But each time, it was the dog that died.
Whatever else may be said of man, this one thing is clear: He is not what he is capable of being.
A crown of roses is also a crown of thorns.
ONCE remove the old arena of theological quarrels, and you will throw open the whole world to the most horrible, the most hopeless, the most endless, the most truly interminable quarrels; the untheological quarrels.
Hell is God’s great compliment to the reality of human freedom and the dignity of human choice.
The difficulty of explaining ‘why I am a Catholic’ is that there are ten thousand reasons all amounting to one reason: that Catholicism is true.
All men are ordinary men; the extraordinary men are those who know it.
We are Christians and Catholics not because we worship a key, but because we have passed a door; and felt the wind that is the trumpet of liberty blow over the land of the living.
Every time a man knocks on a brothel door, he is really knocking for God.
Men rush towards complexity, but they yearn towards simplicity. They try to be kings; but they dream of being shepherds.
The Catholic Church is the only thing that saves man from the degrading slavery of being a child of his age.
Agnostic is the Greek word, for the Latin word, for ignorant.
Wherever there is animal worship, there is human sacrifice.
Teach to the young, men’s enduring truths, and let the learned amuse themselves with their passing errors.
Faith means believing the unbelievable.