From Maximos the Confessor.
“The three young men condemned no one, when they refused to adore the statue everyone else worshipped, … nor did Daniel condemn anyone, when he was thrown into the lions’ den—he simply preferred to die rather than offend God.”

Wendell Berry, re: modern sex education in the schools: “What we are actually teaching the young is an illusion of...purchasable safety, which encourages them to tamper prematurely, disrespectfully, and dangerously with a great power.”

"[Christian] education needs impact the aesthetics of human understanding. It needs to get hold of our gut and capture our imagination—that preconscious, emotional register on which we perceive the world and that, in turn, drives or ‘pulls’ our action… If the practices of Christian formation are truly going to reform our manners and deflect our dispositions to be aimed at the kingdom of God, then such practices need to engender rightly ordered erotic comprehension by renewing and reorienting our imaginations." - James K. A. Smith. from Desiring the Kingdom

Twice in the past few weeks, I’ve heard people who identify as Christians say, in all sincerity, that they didn’t see why anybody needs to go to church, that they can “find God” on their own. I hear some version of that a good bit. With that comes an entire worldview. It’s the complete liberation of the individual from any authority other than his or her own conscience and judgment. Outside an authoritative interpretive community in which one anchors one’s own understanding, the search for God really becomes a search for oneself, and the deification of one’s own attitudes and desires." - Rod Dreher, from “The Past as Bathwater”

"Well, they were hoping to have someone show them the big picture and expecting it to be a mirror. They were a little disappointed to find they weren't even in the picture, not even in the background."

“Done is better than prefect.” - a corporate motto near you

“Perfect never gets done.” - a seminary professor near you, in response

“Expediency is the mere shadow of right and truth; it is the beginning of disorder.” - Lao Tzu

"...The sages have a hundred maps to give
That trace their crawling cosmos like a tree,
They rattle reason out through many a sieve
That stores the sand and lets the gold go free:
And all these things are less than dust to me
Because my name is Lazarus and I live." - G.K. Chesterton

From a 1909 G. K. Chesterton essay: "Of all the marks of modernity that seem to mean a kind of decadence, there is none more menacing and dangerous than the exultation of very small and secondary matters of conduct at the expense of very great and primary ones, at the expense of eternal ties and tragic human morality. If there is one thing worse than the modern weakening of major morals, it is the modern strengthening of minor morals. Thus it is considered more withering to accuse a man of bad taste than of bad ethics. Cleanliness is not next to godliness nowadays, for cleanliness is made essential and godliness is regarded as an offence."

“Dominus noster Christus veritatem se, non consuetudinem cognominavit.” – “Christ our Lord called himself truth, not custom.” - Tertullian