John Senior - The death of Christian culture (1978)

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Taking all that was best in the Greco-Roman world into itself, Western tradition has given us the thousand good books as a preparation for the great ones—and for all studies in the arts and sciences. Without them all studies are inhumane. The brutal athlete and foppish aesthete suffer vices opposed to the virtue of Newman's "gentleman." Anyone working at college, whether in the pure arts and sciences or the practical ones, will discover he has made a quantum leap when he gets even a small amount of cultural ground under him: he will grow up like an undernourished plant suddenly fertilized and watered.

John Senior
Unless the mind achieves its perfection in the making of conceptual judgments, religion and philosophy cannot be understood; and with religion and philosophy gone, all human activity is rudderless.

John Senior
There is no such thing as victimless crime any more than a free lunch. There is no such thing as a Christianity in which the commandments of God are accommodated to the Rights of Man.

John Senior
Peace at the price of one's reason can only be that "evil peace" St. Augustine speaks of as the violent enforcement of injustice.

John Senior
It is commonly agreed also that both "great" and "good" can be judged only from a certain distance. Contemporary works can be appreciated and enjoyed but not very properly judged.

John Senior