12 Quotes by Joseph Pearce

For Tolkien, Catholicism was not an opinion to which one subscribed but a reality to which one submitted. Quite simply, pseudo-psychology aside, Tolkien remained a Catholic for the simple if disarming reason that he believed Catholicism was true.

That which is timeless is also the most timely.

The dragon sickness is a euphemism for the bourgeois materialism which is rife in our consumerist culture. Smaug’s fury at the loss of a single insignificant and practically useless trinket serves as a metaphor for modern man and his mania for possessing trash that he doesn’t need.

Love is the greatest preacher and the greatest teacher.

Non-ambiguity is the shaping force of reality.

He could not write what he wanted, but what he had to.

And here is the paradox at the heart of the Christian life: The one who embraces suffering, who dies to himself in order to die for others, is actually happier than the one who shuns suffering and who puts himself above all else.

In the absence of virtue and wisdom, intelligence becomes a servant of evil.

When Belloc said that the Protestant Reformation was the shipwreck of Christendom, he was simply stating a historical fact, but it was controversial because history is political.