Various

“ Neglect any one part of man's nature, and you at once disturb the equilibrium of the whole, and produce disorder; educate the body at the expense of the mind and soul, and you will have only animated clay; educate the intelligence at the expense of the moral and religious feelings, and you but fearfully increase a man's power to effect evil. You store the arsenal of his mind with weapons to sap alike the altar and the throne, to carry on a war of extermination against every holy principle, against the welfare and the very existence of society. ”

“ Its wonderful life, in spite of opposition which would long ago have destroyed any merely human organization, is so striking a fact that no honest mind can fail to feel its force.
But it is not only as a living body, with a vitality unknown to any other society, that it impresses our intellects; in its wonderful life it has been the guardian of morals, and the author of every high virtue. Civilization owes its very existence to its creed and its fostering care. ”

“ Far from every impure influence, conversing with the Blessed Virgin Mary, passing her time in crowning her with prayers and telling her chaplet, this little maid preserved that absolute purity and baptismal innocence which the breath of the world so easily tarnishes, even in the best. Such was this childish soul, bright and calm as the unknown lakes which lie hidden among lofty mountains and silently reflect the splendors of heaven. "Blessed are the clean of heart," says the Gospel; "for they shall see God." ”

“ He loves poetry and listens to our songs. Poetry will soften his heart, and render him as gentle as he is proud. May this young hero grow in virtue as a flower unfolds in the genial air of spring. May he love noble thoughts, and may graceful words ever sit upon his lips. May the wisdom of Minerva reign in his heart. May he equal Orpheus in the charms of his voice and Hercules in the greatness of his achievements. May he possess all the boldness of Achilles without his fiery temper. May he be good, wise, and beneficent, love mankind tenderly, and be much loved by all in return. ”

“ The Word, by becoming incarnate, enters into the choir of creation, and takes its leadership; brings into it the harmonies of the bosom of God, and on a sudden the music and the songs of the cosmos rise up to the height of its leader, and mingle with the harmonies of eternal life. ”

“ Never were the religious celebrations of Rome so magnificent as they have been and are during this council, when the sanctuary is filled with more than half a thousand prelates, Latin and oriental, in their rich and varied vestments. Strangers and Romans alike crowd the grand basilica. Yet the stranger often fails to see, what the Roman feels, as it were, by instinct, that all this effort at splendor and magnificence is purely and wholly a tribute of man to honor the religion which God in his love and mercy has given, and that no part of it is for man's own honor. ”

“ There is a wonderful vigor and tenacity in the life our Catholic Mother—our [516] Mighty Mother, ever ancient, ever new—imparts. When, by our own fault, we seem to have quenched the last spark of living fire which she kindled upon the altar of our hearts, a passing breath from heaven wafted gently through a fitting word kindly spoken, or the voice of hymn or prayer over the dying embers on the almost abandoned shrine, will awaken the flame anew, and draw the wanderer back to the forsaken source of life, of light, and of warmth. ”

“ Protestantism denies infallibility to the church and assumes it for the age, for the state, for public opinion—that is, for the world. The most shocking blasphemy in its eyes is to assert that the age is fallible and cannot be relied on as a safe or sure guide. We differ from the Protestant; we attribute infallibility to the church, and deny it to the age, even though the age be this enlightened nineteenth century. We do not believe it is always wise or prudent to suffer one's self to be carried away by the dominant tendency or passion of this or any other age. ”

“ Paulus and Benigna stood aside, finding themselves still constrained to listen while waiting for room to enter the blocked-up door of the palace.
"Is it possible," replied Apicius, "that you forget Vedius Pollio, who, since you mention my poor table, has often kindly furnished it with such lampreys as no other mortal ever reared?"
The old man, whose age was not redolent of holiness, but reeking with the peculiar aroma of a life passed in boundless and systematic self-indulgence, leered with running, bloodshot eyes, and murmured that they paid him too much honor. ”

“ Errors the most impious, the most deadly, the most pernicious to the human race, which have been spread abroad during the course of ages, and which have sufficed, taken singly, to turn civil society upside down, are now all assembled together, and united with each other to batter and destroy it. Every thing which is the most true, the most sacred, the most venerated, is attacked; and some persons even go so far as to say that it is lawful to kill, to rob, and to calumniate, in order to attain certain ends. The Council of the Vatican has come, yes, it has come! ”

“ It is the moral power of Christianity which gives her a life and a strength beyond that of the sword. It is the presence of that pontiff who is the visible head of the church, and the centre of Catholic unity and of spiritual authority, which saves her from the fate of other cities. Her true source of life is her religious position. When, centuries ago, the popes, wearied out by the tumults of the people and the turbulence of the barons, withdrew for peace' sake, and abode for seventy years in Avignon, Rome dwindled down to be little better than a village of ten or fifteen thousand souls. ”

“ On her way to execution, she was met by her old servant, Andrew Melville. He threw himself on his knees before her, wringing his hands in uncontrollable agony.
"Woe is me," he cried, "that it should be my hard hap to carry back such tidings to Scotland!"
"Weep not, Melville, my good and faithful servant," she replied; "thou shouldst rather rejoice to see the end of the long troubles of Mary Stuart. This world is vanity, and full of sorrows. I am Catholic, thou Protestant; but as there is but one Christ, I charge thee in his name to bear witness that I die firm in my religion. ”

“ Catiline, the polished patrician, was more dreaded by the Roman senate than the steel of his hired assassins. The French revolution, the most violent outbreak that ever convulsed society, was ushered in by a blaze of genius; but, like the high intelligence of the "archangel ruined," it brought desolation and death in its fiery track. Science without religion is more destructive than the sword in the hands of unprincipled men. "Talent if divorced from rectitude," says Channing, "will prove more of a demon than a god." ”

“ Here as elsewhere the formula of the age, or what claims to be enlightened in it, is, Protestantism and freedom, or Catholicity and slavery; and it is to its prestige of having founded and sustained religious liberty that Protestantism owes its chief ability in our times to carry on its war against the church. Protestantism, like all false religions or systems, having no foundation in truth and no vital energy of its own, lives and prospers only by availing itself of the so-called spirit of the age, or by appealing to the dominant public opinion of the time and the place. ”

“ It was because boys understand fully the force of example, and can wield it with great power to secure their ends. When we consent to act contrary to the still small voice of conscience, we never know how far the consequences of that act may extend. Evil examples attract more imitators than good ones—but woe to him who furnishes them; while firm adherence to the right may win some wavering soul to the path of duty, which will shine as one of the brightest jewels in our crown of rejoicing hereafter! ”

“ But why should the British Parliament suffer the national memorials of Ireland to perish without an effort to preserve them? It can be no gratification to the vanity of Great Britain thus to perpetuate, so long as a trace of the ruined temple or broken altar may be spared, the tokens of a policy able, indeed, to insult and to hinder, but powerless to supplant or destroy the faith of the Irish people. It cannot, alas! be denied that England seized by force upon that Catholic church of Cashel, banished its priests, and employed, for three centuries, its revenues to teach a hostile religion. ”

“ An eager hum of assent and approval arose from the jaded and sated, but inquisitive and critical society around.
"There are in your philosophy," continued Augustus, "two leading principles, my Athenian, in support of which I am both curious and anxious to hear you advance some solid and convincing reasons. You despise, as Cicero despised it, the notion of a plurality of gods. You affirm there is only one. You say that a god who could begin to be a god, or begin at all, can be no god; and that the true King of all kings, is the giver of whatever exists, and the recipient of nothing. ”

“ Such a system, having no relation with the living and moving world, and no reason in the nature or constitution of things, could not satisfy a living and thinking man, in downright earnest for a truth at least as broad and as living as his own soul. It was too little, too insignificant, too mesquine, too much of a dead and putrefying body to satisfy either his intellect or his heart. If that is the true exponent of Christianity, and the most enlightened portion of mankind say it is, why shall I belie my own understanding, my own better nature, by professing to believe and reverence it? ”

“ The people have been badly governed. Let them be called upon to take part in their own government for the future. "There is danger," he grants, "in passing suddenly from unqualified dependence to an excess of liberty. Great caution will be necessary; but it is nevertheless certain that arbitrary authority will not save the country from ruin." "Despotism," he adds, "with plenty of means, is a government of prompt action; but when despotism becomes bankrupt, the first who abandon it to ruin are the venal men whom it has allowed to fatten on the blood of the people." ”

“ Augustus turned, after a short, brooding look at Caligula, to Haterius, and said,
"What think you, my Quintus? Has our Athenian made good his theories?"
"He has presented them like rocks of adamant," responded Haterius. "Dionysius has convinced me perfectly that the universe has been produced and is governed by the great being of whom he has so earnestly and so luminously spoken."
"Yet one word with you, young philosopher," said Antistius Labio, sending a glance all round the circle, and finally contemplating intently the broad, candid brow and kindly blue eyes of the Athenian; "one word! ”

“ The eternal Sower, whose invisible hand fills with stars and planets the immensity of space, who has drawn from nothing the ground which we tread, and its plants and animals, the Creator of the millions of men who people the earth, and the myriads of angels who dwell in heaven, this God, whose wealth and power know no bounds, takes care that no atom shall be lost in the vast regions of his handiwork. He leaves barren no spot which is capable of producing any thing. ”

“ Mind and heart, and, we might almost say, the body too, seem to live in a new world, in which the all-absorbing thought and affair is the grand mystery of what God has done in his infinite power and love to redeem this fallen race of man.
What emotions must fill the catholic heart as, after perhaps a long and weary journey, one is rapidly borne on by the train from Civita Vecchia, and knows at last that within one hour he will be in Rome. ”

“ I really think the Catholic doctrine, that the church triumphant prays for the church militant, (for what is the true Christian but a soldier of Christ engaged in a life-long conflict with the world, the flesh, and the devil?) and that the church militant supplicates the mercy of God on behalf of the church suffering, is a beautiful and a consoling one. It is a golden chain that binds the souls of the redeemed in holy communion with each other. ”

“ And yet should we not expect that the same spirit of insubordinate pride which leads reason to deny the existence of God, or his Divine Providence, or the fact of divine revelations, or emboldens feeble, ignorant man to measure, as it were, his feeble intelligence against the infinite wisdom of God, should also not refrain from charging the Catholic Church with being an incubus on the human mind, with narrowing the intellect and fettering the reason, with restricting our liberty of thought, narrowing the field of science, and dwarfing the whole intellectual man? ”

“ We have under its constitution no right to call upon it to aid us, directly or indirectly, in unmaking Protestant children of their Protestantism. Of course, before God, or in the spiritual order, we recognize no equality between Catholicity and Protestantism. Before God, no man has any right to be of any religion but the Catholic, the only true religion, the only religion by which men can be raised to union with God in the beatific vision. But before the American state, we recognize in Protestants equal rights with our own. ”