Quotes about Responsibility

What is discovered may be abused, but that does not mean the discovery was evil.

In the eleven months preceding the outbreak of World War II, 211 treaties of peace were signed. Were these treaties of peace written on paper, or were they written on the hearts of men? And we must ask ourselves as we hear of treaties being written today, whether the treaties of the UN are written with the full cognizance of the fact that those who sign them are responsible before God?

They excuse themselves, saying they are bored because they are not loved: No! They are bored because they do not love; because they have denied love.

He stands at the door and knocks, but the latch is on the inside, and only we can open it. He has enacted the consecration, but the communion depends upon us; and whether our work will ever be finished depends entirely on how we relive His life and become other Christ's, for His Good Friday and His passion avail us nothing unless we relive it in our own lives.

The porter who took my bag said to me: "Everybody knows you; it must be wonderful to be a bishop." And I said to him: "Suppose you had four hundred children and ten were very sick and five were dying. Would you not worry and stay awake at night? Well, that is my family. It is not as wonderful as you think.

We lose our souls not only by the evil we do but also by the good we leave undone.

One will never find a professor who denies freedom of the will who does not also have something in his life for which he wishes to shake off responsibility.

So when God pulls down the curtain on the drama of the world's redemption, He will not ask what part we played, but only how well we played the role assigned to us.

Always touched with sympathy for human infirmities, we bear the burden of nations in our hearts.

He who does not advance in perfection falls into imperfection. An unattended garden becomes full of weeds. Things do not remain the same by being left alone. White fences do not stay white; they gradually become gray and then black. There are no planes in the spiritual life. We go uphill or we go downhill. The moment we cease to row against the stream, the current carries us down river.

The lazy priest always has less time than the zealous priest, because the former is thinking in terms of the interruptions to his leisure, while the latter seeks the opportunity to be another Christ. The priest's time is not his own; it is Our Lord's.

Sex understood in the modern way is Eros-love severed from responsibility; it is desire without obligation. Because it is lawless desire, it is therefore Godless desire. That is why eroticism and atheism always go together.