Video Meliora, proboque; Deteriora sequor

You might say we exchanged Thy's for thighs. - from Bill of "Summa Minutiae" on our current casualness of dress and address

Everytime we hit a setback here, I told Mrs. Curley that 100 years ago they didn't have .... and she would reply that this was why people didn't live as long 100 years ago. - Jim Curley of "Bethune Catholic"

By his own account, Jim Rosenau was given a proper upbringing... "I was raised with a near-religious relationship to books. Never write in a book. Don’t lose someone else’s place. How to protect its vitally-important spine. Rules pertaining to the avoidance of moisture. And, like all observant families, we were taken once a week to the library for worship." But then, several years ago, he began to engage in unspeakable practices. He built bookcases -- out of books!...Catholic Bibliophagist has mixed feelings about Mr. Rosenau's enterprise. I find his work to be clever and visually amusing. And yet . . . I also view it with a horrified fascination. Intellectually, I realize that he only works with books that nobody wants, books that "look better than they read." But I can't help feeling a little queasy at their vivisection and their transformation into bibliofrankenstein constructions. - Catholic Bibliophagist

I tell you what, you take an Asian woman and give her some Christianity and you're in the company of a wonder of the modern world. - Bill Luse

In applying what he preaches, he advocated living as opposed to overindulgent self-reflection. His thoughts were, "The overly examined life would inevitably discover problems therefore,'The best was to live is just to live.'" - amazon.com commenter on biography of Norman Vincent Peale

So larger business have a vested interest in more uniform company cultures in general, and in being able to treat employees as fungible cogs in the machine, because a much greater part of their value is tied to liquidity. This is true despite the fact that uniform PC corporatist culture makes employees on an individual basis miserable and less productive as individuals: the fact that employees can be treated as meaningless abstract interchangeable units of productivity makes up for the fact that each dehumanized fungible productivity unit is, because dehumanized, less productive. The fungibility entailed by treating the things important to persons as persons as meaningless makes up for the loss of individual productivity in particular roles. The saleability of your productivity robots on the open market is just as important as their intrinsic productivity in the tasks you've assigned them if it is your intention all along to opportunistically trade them for some other fungible productivity machines...At a major Fortune 50 company the mandatory diversity program for new hires is called (or at least relatively recently was called) -- wait for it -- "Becoming One Voice". You can't make this stuff up. - Zippy Catholic

I was once in a district-wide meeting on multiculturalism for the school disctrict in which I taught. The administrator in charge spoke at the beginning, and with a straight face he told all us teachers that when it comes to the issue of multiculturalism--"You are with us, or you are against us." I nearly fell out of my chair. - commenter on "Zippy Catholic" post

A huge step toward the cog in the machine happened when we went from "Personnel" to "Human Resources." We are like coal, or steel, raw materials to be used and discarded at the whim of those doing the using. - Steven Riddle, on the same subject

I will never read St. John Climacus in exactly the same way again--which is a good thing--pawing through desert dust for a kernel of insight is hardly rewarding, but realizing that what is said has relevance for people who do not live in the same circumstances--that we're not pawing through desert dust, but walking through the living water of the love of God. - Steven of "Flos Carmeli" after reading a book titled "Soul Provider"

I am often drawn to abnormal people. For example, if you have read Veritatis Splendor in its entirety, I consider you abnormal. If you have read it and understood it, you probably occupy, in terms of numbers, that human demographic represented by an Aborigine in the Outback. If you have read it, understood it, and given it your consent (that is, to the proposition that you may not ever, under any circumstance, no matter how urgent, do evil that good may come), you are probably so rare among men as to be nearly of another species. - William of "Apologia"

I think there are legitimate reasons you could vote in favor of someone who wouldn’t be where the church is on abortion, but it would have to be a reason that you could confidently explain to Jesus and the victims of abortion when you meet them at the Judgment...and we will meet them. That’s the only criterion. It can’t be that we favor a particular party, or that we’re hostile to the war, or so on. - Archbishop Chaput