Orestes Brownson quotes

If you would make a man happy, study not to augment his goods; but to diminish his wants. One of the greatest services Christianity has rendered the world has been its consecration of poverty, and its elevation of labor to the dignity of a moral duty.
-- Orestes Brownson

#Men #World #Want

I love the Irish for their attachment to the faith and for many amiable and noble qualities, but they are deficient in good sense, sound judgement, and manly character.
-- Orestes Brownson

#Character #Attachment #Judgement

The great object was to get rid of Christianity, and to convert our churches into halls of science. The plan was not to make open attacks on religion, although we might the clergy and bring them into contempt where we could: but to establish a system of state - we said national - schools, from which all religion was to be excluded.
-- Orestes Brownson

#Christian #Religious #School

If there must always be a laboring population distinct from proprietors and employers, we regard the slave system as decidedly preferable to the system at wages.
-- Orestes Brownson

#Population #Wages #Politics

Wages is a cunning device of the devil, for the benefit of tender consciences, who would retain all the advantages of the slave system, without the expense, trouble, and odium of being slave-holders.
-- Orestes Brownson

#Devil #Wages #Benefits

The United States, or the American Republic, has a mission, and is chosen of God for the realization of a great idea. It has been chosen not only to continue the work assigned to Greece and Rome, but to accomplish a greater work than was assigned to either. In art, it will prove false to its mission if it do not rival Greece; and in science and philosophy, if it do not surpass it. In the State, in law, in jurisprudence, it must continue and surpass Rome.
-- Orestes Brownson

#Art #Philosophy #Rome

Is it a particularly British trait to so utterly adore truly appalling men, from Tony Hancock through to Steptoe and Alf Garnett, Captain Mainwaring, Rigsby, Del Boy, Victor Meldrew and on to David Brent from The Office. The most deeply adored characters are all simply vile.

No one man is superior to the game.

The soul of the slave, the soul of the "little man," is as dear to me as the soul of the great.

As I make my slow pilgrimage through the world, a certain sense of beautiful mystery seems to gather and grow.

Photographs are of course about their makers, and are to be read for what they disclose in that regard no less than for what they reveal of the world as their makers comprehend, invent, and describe it.

And how am I to face the odds Of man's bedevilment and God's? I, a stranger and afraid In a world I never made.

Who made the world I cannot tell; 'Tis made, and here am I in hell. My hand, though now my knuckles bleed, I never soiled with such a deed.

There are certain things I want to keep to me. I don't discuss my private life.

Keep working hard and you can get anything that you want.

Our society covers these problems with a veil. All I want is an open discussion