“This is what defines the peculiarity of Augustine’s pilgrim city in this world: its members…refer these concerns to the enjoyment of eternal peace. Thus when a Christian, from such an eschatological perspective, affirms some secular value, some human enterprise or achievement, his affirmation will not be an simple self-identification. His peculiar posture to the world precludes identifying himself with its values without some reservation. The fullest endorsement of a secular value is tinged with criticism. What others may affirm simply as good the Christian has to subject to a more exacting standard. His good must survive the more deeply penetrating questioning from an eschatological perspective.”—R.A. Markus, Saeculum: History and Society in the Theology of St. Augustine
“It is necessary in this age for the citizens of the kingdom of heaven, surrounded as they are by the lost and the impious, to be vested by temptations, so that they can be trained and tested like gold in a furnace. We ought not therefore to wish to live only with the holy and the just before the time is right; so that we might deserve to be granted it at the proper time.”—Augustine, Augustine’s Political Writings Letter 189
From Plato's Republic (Jowett translation)
“Neither ought our guardians to be given to laughter. For a fit of laughter which has been indulged to excess almost always produces a violent reaction.”—III.388“Then if any one at all is to have the privilege of lying, the rulers of the State should be the persons; and they, in their dealings either with enemies or with their own citizens, may be allowed to lie for the public good.”—III.389
“Here, then, is a discovery of new evils, I said, against which the guardians will have to watch, or they will creep into the city unobserved. What evils? Wealth, I said, and poverty; the one is the parent of luxury and indolence, and the other of meanness and viciousness, and both of discontent.”—IV.422
“For what purpose do you conceive that we have come here, said Thrasymachus,—to look for gold, or to hear discourse? Yes, but discourse should have a limit. Yes, Socrates, said Glaucon, and the whole of life is the only limit which wise men assign to the hearing of such discourses.”—V.450
“Yes; and where there is no common but only private feeling a State is disorganized—when you have one half of the world triumphing and the other plunged in grief at the same events happening to the city or the citizens?”—V.462
“Whereas the truth is that the State in which the rulers are most reluctant to govern is always the best and most quietly governed, and the State in which they are most eager, the worst.”—VII.520
“Having noble and generous tempers, they should also have the natural gifts which will facilitate their education. And what are these? Such gifts as keenness and ready powers of acquisition; for the mind more often faints from the severity of study than from the severity of gymnastics: the toil is more entirely the mind’s own, and is not shared with the body.”—VII.535
“Because a freeman ought not to be a slave in the acquisition of knowledge of any kind. Bodily exercise, when compulsory, does no harm to the body; but knowledge which is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind.”—VII.536
“He is drawn into a perfectly lawless life, which by his seducers is termed perfect liberty.”—IX.573
From Christianity and Liberalism, J. Gresham Machen
“In the sphere of religion, as in other spheres, the things about which men are agreed are apt to be the things that are least worth holding; the really important things are the things about which men will fight."“A public school system, if means the providing of free education for those who desire it, is a noteworthy and beneficent achievement of modern times; but when once it becomes monopolistic it is the most perfect instrument of tyranny which has yet been devised.”
“From the beginning, the meaning of the happening was set forth; and when the meaning of the happening was set forth then there was Christian doctrine. ‘Christ died’—that is history; ‘Christ died for our sins’—that is doctrine. Without these two elements, joined in an absolutely indissoluble union, there is no Christianity.”
“…as he trips along lightly over the problems of history…”
“…brotherhood of beneficent vagueness…”
“Since it has never occurred to him to attend to the subtilties of the theologians, he has that comfortable feeling which always comes to the churchgoer when someone else’s sins are being attacked.”
“Evidently, therefore, those words of Jesus which are to be regarded as authoritative by modern liberalism must first be selected from the mass of recorded words by a critical process. The critical process is certainly very difficult, and the suspicion often arises that the critic is retaining as genuine only those words which conform to his own preconceived ideas.”
“But unfortunately language is valuable only as the expression of thought. The English word ‘God’ has no particular virtue in itself; it is not more beautiful than other words. Its importance depends altogether upon the meaning which is attached to it. When, therefore, the liberal preacher says that ‘Jesus is God’ the significance of the utterance depends altogether upon what is meant by ‘God.’”
“He is not a manufactured figure suitable as a point of support for ethical maxims, but a genuine Person whom a man can love. Men have loved Him throughout all the Christian centuries. And the strange thing is that despite all the efforts to remove Him from the pages of history, there are those who love Him still.”
“It is certainly true that the Christian way of salvation places a stupendous responsibility upon men. But that responsibility is like the responsibility which, as ordinary observation shows, God does, as a matter of fact, commit to men. It is like the responsibility, for example, of the parent for the child. The parent has full power to mar the soul as well as the body of the child. The responsibility is terrible, but it is a responsibility which unquestionably exists.”
“The truth is, the God of modern preaching, though He may perhaps be very good, is rather uninteresting. Nothing is so insipid as indiscriminate good humor. Is that really love that costs so little? If God will necessarily forgive, no matter what we do, why trouble ourselves about Him at all? Such a God may deliver us from the fear of Hell. But His Heaven, if He has any, is full of sin.”
“Thus there is an enormous difference between the modern liberal and the Christian man with reference to human institutions like the community and the state, and with reference to human efforts at applying the Golden Rule in industrial relationships. The modern liberal is optimistic with reference to these institutions; the Christian man is pessimistic unless the institutions be manned by Christian men.”
“Narrowness does not consist in definite devotion to certain convictions or in definite rejection of others. But the narrow man is the man who rejects the other man’s convictions without first endeavoring to understand them, the man who makes no effort to look at things from the other man’s point of view.”
“Involuntary organizations ought to be tolerant, but voluntary organizations, so far as the fundamental purpose of their existence is concerned, must be intolerant or else cease to exist.”
“There is sometimes a salutary lack of logic which prevents the whole of a man’s faith from being destroyed when he has given up a part.”
“It is strange how in the interest of an utterly false kindness to men, Christians are sometimes willing to relinquish their loyalty to the crucified Lord.”
From Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austen
“Lucy was naturally clever; her remarks were often just and amusing; and as a companion for half an hour Elinor frequently found her agreeable; but her powers had received no aid from education: she was ignorant and illiterate; and her deficiency of all mental improvement, her want of information in the most common particulars, could not be concealed from Miss Dashwood, in spite of her constant endeavor to appear to advantage.”“She was not a woman of many words; for, unlike people in general, she proportioned them to the number of her ideas.”
“Because they neither flattered herself nor her children, she could not believe them good-natured; and because they were fond of reading, she fancied them satirical: perhaps without exactly knowing what it was to be satirical; but that did not signify. It was censure in common use, and easily given.”
“The party, like other musical parties, comprehended a great many people who had real taste for the performance, and a great many more who had none at all; and the performers themselves were, as usual, in their own estimation, and that of their immediate friends, the first private performers in England.”
“Elinor agreed to it all, for she did not think he deserved the compliment of rational opposition.”
“[Marianne,] who had the knack of finding her way in every house to the library, however it might be avoided by the family in general, soon procured herself a book.”
“Though a very few hours spent in the hard labor of incessant talking will dispatch more subjects than can really be in common between any two rational creatures, yet with lovers it is different. Between them no subject is finished, no communication is even made, till it has been made at least twenty times over.”
“All warfare is based on deception.”—Sun Tzu, Art of War
