Quote of the Day (Alexander Pushkin, on One “Whose Heart Experience Has Chilled’)

“Blest he who’s given to believing,
  Who sets aside cold intellect,
  Whose heart, enjoying bliss delightful,
  Rests like a traveller drunk at nightfall
  Or (gentler) like a butterfly
  That settles on a flower near by;
  But sad is he who lacks illusion,
  Whose head is steady, never stirred,
  Who hates each impulse, every word,
  Foreseeing always their conclusion;
  Whose heart experience has chilled,
  Whose urge to reverie is stilled.”—Russian poet, playwright, and fiction writer Alexander Pushkin (1799-1837), Eugene Onegin: A Novel in Verse (1833), translated by Stanley Mitchell (2008)

Quote of the Day (Marcel Proust, on the Intellect and the Truth)

“The intellect is not the most subtle, powerful and appropriate instrument for grasping the truth….It is life which little by little, case by case, allows us to realize that what is most important for our hearts or our minds is taught us not by reason but by other powers. And then it is the intellect itself, which, recognizing their superiority, uses its reasoning in order to abdicate in their favour and accepts the role of collaborator and servant.” —French novelist Marcel Proust (1871-1922), The Fugitive, Vol. 6 of In Search of Lost Time, translated by Peter Collier (1925)

Quote of the Day (Jacques Barzun, on ‘The Desire to Annihilate’ in Politics)

“The scrimmage of politics is for the purpose of determining who shall transact the government's business. If in the struggle the desire to accomplish one's purpose turns into a desire to annihilate one's opponent, the outcome is civil war. Historically, this desire to annihilate finds its support and justification in Intellect, in ideas, for ideas are clear-cut and divide. Material interests can be compromised, principles cannot."—French-American historian and educator Jacques Barzun (1907-2012), The House of Intellect (1959)

Quote of the Day (Fulton Sheen, On Intellectual and Moral Preparation for the Faith)

“The moral preparation for the Faith or for making Divine Truth dynamic in us is as important as the intellectual; both kinds of readying should go together, the Wisdom and the Love of God, the Son and the Holy Spirit are equal in the Trinity. If the reason is neglected, a different sort of error follows. Those whom the moral development outstrips the intellectual generally end in a religion that is negative, critical, and pharisaical, or else in. a vague, emotional piety without content—as those who have intellectual without no growth become skeptics, cynics, and doubters. We can never love until we know; but once we love, then it can increase knowledge.”—Venerable Fulton J. Sheen (1895-1979), Lift Up Your Heart: A Guide to Spiritual Peace

(1950)

Quote of the Day (Mortimer Adler, on Why ‘The Great Ideas Belong to Everyone’)

“We often think of ourselves as living in a world which no longer has any unexplored frontiers. We speak of pioneering as a thing of the past. But in doing so we forget that the greatest adventure of all still challenges us – what Mr. Justice [Oliver Wendell] Holmes [Jr.] called ‘the adventure of the human mind.’ Men may be hemmed in geographically, but every generation stands on the frontiers of the mind. In the world of ideas, there is always pioneering to be done, and it can be done by anyone who will use the equipment with which he is endowed. The great ideas belong to everyone.”—American philosopher and educator Mortimer Adler (1902-2001), Reforming Education: The Opening of the American Mind (1989)

Quote of the Day (Belloc and Chesterton, on Politics and Intellect)

“The standard of intellect in politics is so low that men of moderate mental capacity have to stoop in order to reach it.”— Hilaire Belloc (1870-1953) (pictured) and Cecil Chesterton (1879-1918), The Party System (1911)