It is not funny that anything else should fall down; only that a man should fall down. Why do we laugh? Because it is a gravely religious matter: it is the Fall of Man. Only man can be absurd: for only man can be dignified.

One can survive everything, nowadays, except death, and live down everything except a good reputation.

What do you want a meaning for? Life is a desire, not a meaning.

Atheism shows strength of mind, but only to a certain degree.

Christianity supplies a Hell for the people who disagree with you and a Heaven for your friends.

Sin is geographical.

There’s no trick to being a humorist when you have the whole government working for you.

Thought is the wind and knowledge the sail.

Everything that we see is a shadow cast by that which we do not see.

Religion is the recognition of all our duties as divine commands.

Use, do not abuse… neither abstinence nor excess ever renders man happy.

A first sign of the beginning of understanding is the wish to die.

Only kings, presidents, editors, and people with tapeworms have the right to use the editorial ‚we.‘

People make jokes about my bosoms, why don’t they look underneath the breasts at the heart? It’s obvious I’ve got big ones and if people want to assume they’re not mine, then let them.

Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former.

I do put a lot of God in my music, but not because I’m super religious. There are a lot of demons in my music, too. I acknowledge both.

Music is either sacred or secular. The sacred agrees with its dignity, and here has its greatest effect on life, an effect that remains the same through all ages and epochs. Secular music should be cheerful throughout.

I’ve been thinking of humorous things since I was… I can’t remember when. All the way through elementary school, all the way through junior high, all the way through high school, through college and after college, I was thinking of the same kinds of things that I say in front of an audience now.

I’ve seen George Foreman shadow boxing, and the shadow won.

The Four Levels of Comedy: Make your friends laugh, Make strangers laugh, Get paid to make strangers laugh, and Make people talk like you because it’s so much fun.

The capacity of human beings to bore one another seems to be vastly greater than that of any other animal.

At the heart of the Irish economy has always been the philosophy of tax competitiveness. On the cranky left, that is very annoying; I can see that.

Lo! The poor Indian, whose untutored mind sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind.

I didn’t want to submit to the army and then, on the day of judgment, have God say to me, ‚Why did you do that?‘ This life is a trial, and you realize that what you do is going to be written down for Judgment Day.

When we speak of faith – the faith that can move mountains – we are not speaking of faith in general but of faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.

Rules are not necessarily sacred, principles are.

I cannot and will not recant anything, for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe. Here I stand, I can do no other, so help me God. Amen.

To have no time for philosophy is to be a true philosopher.

Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.

We usually lose today, because there has been a yesterday, and tomorrow is coming.

The difference between a misfortune and a calamity is this: If Gladstone fell into the Thames, it would be a misfortune. But if someone dragged him out again, that would be a calamity.

How many legs does a dog have if you call his tail a leg? Four. Saying that a tail is a leg doesn’t make it a leg.

Despite the slowness, the infidelity, the errors and sins it committed and might still commit against its members, the Church, trust me, has no other meaning and goal but to live and witness Jesus.

Life without liberty is like a body without spirit.

I can’t prove it scientifically, that there’s a God, but I believe.

All intelligent thoughts have already been thought; what is necessary is only to try to think them again.

By the sole fact of his entering into ‚Thought,‘ man represents something entirely singular and absolutely unique in the field of our experience. On a single planet, there could not be more than one centre of emergence for reflexion.

For me, the real earth is that chosen part of the universe, still almost universally dispersed and in course of gradual segregation, but which is little by little taking on body and form in Christ.

In the final analysis, the questions of why bad things happen to good people transmutes itself into some very different questions, no longer asking why something happened, but asking how we will respond, what we intend to do now that it happened.

Truth, being limitless, unconditioned, unapproachable by any path whatsoever, cannot be organized; nor should any organization be formed to lead or to coerce people along any particular path. If you first understand that, then you will see how impossible it is to organize a belief.

If a man loses his reverence for any part of life, he will lose his reverence for all of life.

For where God built a church, there the Devil would also build a chapel.

Life is hard. After all, it kills you.

There is a rumour going around that I have found God. I think this is unlikely because I have enough difficulty finding my keys, and there is empirical evidence that they exist.

I think one’s feelings waste themselves in words; they ought all to be distilled into actions which bring results.

Nothing gives rest but the sincere search for truth.

Do I think faith will be an important part of being a good president? Yes, I do.

All thought must, directly or indirectly, by way of certain characters, relate ultimately to intuitions, and therefore, with us, to sensibility, because in no other way can an object be given to us.

Those who want the Government to regulate matters of the mind and spirit are like men who are so afraid of being murdered that they commit suicide to avoid assassination.

A person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges is not Christian. This is not in the Gospel.

Truths and roses have thorns about them.

I am not the Catholic candidate for President. I am the Democratic Party’s candidate for President, who happens also to be a Catholic.

Nature abhors annihilation.

You are a child of the sun, you come from the sun, and that is something true with the Earth also… your relationship with the Earth is so deep, and the Earth is in you and this is something not very difficult, much less difficult then philosophy.

I think being funny is not anyone’s first choice.

No man enjoys the true taste of life, but he who is ready and willing to quit it.

I’m a religious woman. And I feel I have responsibility. I have no modesty at all. I’m even afraid of it – it’s a learned affectation and it’s just stuck on me like decals. Now I pray for humility because that comes from inside out.

I told the doctor I broke my leg in two places. He told me to quit going to those places.

You are a little soul carrying around a corpse.

The key to immortality is first living a life worth remembering.

The cause of my life has been to oppose superstition. It’s a battle you can’t hope to win – it’s a battle that’s going to go on forever. It’s part of the human condition.