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" Perhaps no General Council has been more naturally fitted than the Vatican Council to produce a masterpiece of religious thought and literature. No assembly of men since the time of Christ has ever been so representative of Christian and national thought. "

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" We shall not hold the dangerous axiom that 'truth is the best policy,' because policy is but a means to an end; and truth is an end, not a means. "

Vincent McNabb

Truth Is

Best

Truth

" The deductive reasons for a course of action usually follow rather than precede the course of action. Thought follows life. "

" As you are not yet married, and as marriage is the fundamental state of life as well as the unity of the commonwealth, make up your mind whether you are called to this state. If you make up your mind to marry, do not marry merely a good wife: marry a good mother to your children. "

" Certain gifts God makes to the human soul without its asking or desiring; but there are other gifts which the grown-up soul, with the use of reason, can only have by its desire. "

" How different would this country be if few were engaged in making money and many in making things. "

" Hope is some extraordinary spiritual grace that God gives us to control our fears, not to oust them. "

" One of the essential and most valid objections against the act of faith is that it is irrational, inasmuch as it offends against the syllogistic rule that the conclusion of an argument shall contain nothing more than the premises. "

" Quit Babylon for love of the Babylonians.And do not seek ease or security you can obtain by using Babylon. What will it avail you to cease living in Babylon if you do not also cease living on Babylon? "

" Though many men would be content to follow Christ by taking up their cross, few would be willing to follow Him by denying their reason. "

Vincent McNabb

Men

Reason

" St. Thomas is right. The essential prayer is the prayer of petition. "

" Sometimes it is a great joy just to listen to someone we love talking. "

" Ordinary Catholics are praying when they do not think they are. They are praying when they offer implicitly all they are doing to God. "

" What is superfluous to your poor estate, distribute. This is distributive charity: a virtue so sacred that crimes against it are the forerunner of inevitable doom. "

" Of a truth, there is an inward, formless, inarticulate, almost unconscious, prayer, the very breath of love, whereby the soul is knit fast to the God whom it has tracked, amidst the tangled underwood of human life, to his covert on the eternal hills. "

" No sin, especially no great sin, is just a harm done to the individual who commits it. I believe myself that the future of the human race is bound up with that idea. The soul that is conscious of a grievous sin is conscious of a great harm done to the community - to someone else. That common hurt should now be forgiven. "

" The Virgin Birth is possible if there is a God. An Omnipotent Being who can do all things and yet cannot do some things is hardly worth our attack or defence. "

" That mystic clasp of love lies not on the threshold but at the end of spiritual life, and can be reached for the most part only after much spiritual exercising, many denials, self-denials, watchings, and, it may be, the Cross of pain and disillusionment. "

" It is no more irrational for the mind to take the word of the Eternal Word than for the eye to use light and for the ear to welcome sound. "

Vincent McNabb

Mind

Welcome

" It is somewhat surprising that collections of the 'hundred best books,' which usually begin with the Bible and generally include Marcus Aurelius, should give no place to the Acts of the General Councils, though mere literary works have done little beyond filling vacant hours, and these Acts have renewed the face of the earth. "

" The forms of thought, into which we throw our timid views of God, are but symbols of truths greater than our thoughts. Yet we may not set them aside as worthless, for they are the rungs on which we dwellers in the cave climb to the full view of the Truth, as he is. "

" Most humbly, my beloved Saviour, I bow myself before thee. I am a worm and no man. I alone deserve to suffer. I alone shrink from suffering. I was with thee in thy days of joy, singing 'Hosanna,' and I wished to make thee King. Now, in thine hour of suffering, I am far from thee. "

" As the wedded pair have given each other power over their bodies, it would be a grave sin for one to refuse either altogether or for a considerable time the fulfilment of the marriage debt. "

" We cannot go alone to God. We belong to His Mystical Body, the Church; by even our most secret sins, if they be grievous, we have injured the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ and must ask forgiveness of His Mystical Body, too. "

" We shall seek first to tell the truth rather than to study the subtle art of adjusting it to the circumstances of time and person. "