If the present civilisation does not acquire some stable moral fondations ("bases morales stables", Fr.), its existence will hardly be more assured than that of the civilisations that have preceeded it, and which have fallen (or collapse, or failed).
I love scrapes. They are the only things that are never serious." "Oh, that's nonsense, Algy. You never talk anything but nonsense." "Nobody ever does.
When a bishop at the first shot abandons the worship of Christ and rallies his flock round the altar of Mars, he may be acting patriotically... but that does not justify him in pretending...that Christ is, in effect, Mars.
Use truth as your anvil, nonviolence as your hammer and anything that does not stand the test when it is brought to the anvil of truth and hammered with nonviolence, reject it.
I call a lie: wanting not to see something one does see, wanting not to see something as one sees it... The most common lie is the lie one tells to oneself; lying to others is relatively the exception.
The flesh does not by its own virtue purify, but is purified by virtue of the Word by which it was assumed, when 'the Word became flesh and dwelt among us' (Jn. 1:14).
Perfection does not come from belief or faith. Talk does not count for anything. Parrots can do that. Perfection comes through the disinterested performance of action.