#579

Man at times despairs with dignity, but it is rare for him to hope with intelligence.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 109

#578

In order to avoid a manly confrontation with nothingness, man erects altars to progress.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 109

#577

The proletariat appears when the people become a class which adopts bourgeois values without possessing bourgeois property.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 109

#576

The ancients saw in the historical or mythical hero, in Alexander or in Achilles, the standard of human life. The great man was paradigmatic, his existence exemplary.
The patron saint of the democrat, on the other hand, is the vulgar man.
The democratic model must be strictly lacking in every admirable quality.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 108

#575

The psychiatrist considers only vulgar behavior sane.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 108

#574

It is no longer enough for the citizen to submit—the modern state demands accomplices.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 108

#573

When respect for tradition dies out, society, in its incessant desire to renew itself, consumes itself in a frenzy.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 108

#572

Popular consent is an index of legitimacy, but not a cause.
In the debate over the legitimacy of power neither its origin in the vote nor its origin in force counts.
Power is legitimate if it fulfills the mandate which the vital and ethical necessities of a society confer on it.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 108

#571

Law is not what an act of the will decrees, but what intelligence discovers.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 107

#570

Authority is not delegating men, but procuring values.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 107

#569

Individualism degenerates into the beatification of caprice.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 107

#568

The barbarian either totally mocks or totally worships.
Civilization is a smile that discreetly combines irony and respect.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 107

#567

To civilize someone is to teach him how to use what is inferior without putting a price on it.
To be civilized is to not confuse the important with the merely necessary.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 107

#566

Nobody will ever induce me to absolve human nature because I know myself.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 107

#565

My truth is the sum of what I am, not a simple summary of what I think.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 107

#564

Every truth is a risk we assume by supporting ourselves on an indefinite series of infinitely small certainties.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 106

#563

Lyric poetry alone survives, because the human heart is the only corner of the world which reason dares not invade.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 106

#562

Whoever is curious about how to measure his stupidity should count the number of things that seem obvious to him.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 106

#561

The businessman’s greed surprises me less than the seriousness with which he satisfies it.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 106

#560

Happiness is a moment of silence between two of life’s noises.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 106

#559

God is not the object of my reason, nor of my sensibility, but of my being.
God exists for me in the same act in which I exist.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 106

#558

Religion is the tremor that the shaking of our roots transmits to our branches.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 106

#557

When we see that man cannot calculate the consequences of his actions, political problems do not lose their importance, but the solutions lose their interest.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 105

#556

In a century where the media publish endless stupidities, the cultured man is defined not by what he knows but what he does not know.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 105

#555

What happens in periods of unbelief is not that religious problems appear absurd, but that they do not appear to be problems.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 105

#554

Let us bow our heads when the historian demonstrates that a certain thing happened, but let us be content to smile when he asserts that it was bound to happen.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 105

#553

How rare are those who do not admire books they have not read!

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 105

#552

Intelligence hastens to solve problems which life has not even raised yet.
Wisdom is the art of stopping it.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 105

#551

Intelligence is guided not so much by ratiocination as by sympathies and aversions.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 104

#550

Serenity is the fruit of uncertainty freely accepted.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 104

#549

Upon each person depends whether his soul, deprived of its many pretensions by the years, is revealed as bitter spite or as humble resignation.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 104

#548

The writer never confesses to anything except what fashion authorizes.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 104

#547

History might only come from insignificant actions.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 104

#546

Apostatizing from literature is how one makes a career today in letters, like apostatizing from the bourgeoisie among the bourgeois.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 104

#545

Apologetics should mix skepticism and poetry.
Skepticism to strangle idols, poetry to seduce souls.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 104

#544

There are ideas that are not true, but which should be.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 103

#543

Reasons, arguments, proofs appear each day less evident to the believer.
And what he believes more evident.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 103

#542

The individual believes in the “meaning of history” when the foreseeable future appears favorable to his passions.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 103

#541

Our freedom has no other guarantee than the barricades which the anarchic countenance of the world throws up against the imperialism of reason.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 103

#540

Man unleashes catastrophes when he insists on making coherent the contradictory evidences among which he lives.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 103

#539

From the sum of all points of view does not emerge the object in relief, but confusion.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 103

#538

Modern education delivers intact minds to propaganda.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 103

#537

In every age a minority lives today’s problems and a majority yesterday’s.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 102

#536

The thirst runs out before the water does.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 102

#535

An individual’s efficiency is less a virtue than a threat to his neighbors.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 102

#534

The world is a shattered purpose that the noble soul endeavors to restore.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 102

#533

Sometimes the crime to be committed is so horrible that the nation is not a good enough pretext and it is necessary to invoke humanity.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 102

#532

One being alone can suffice for you.
But let it never be Man.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 102

#531

Every man is capable, at each moment, of possessing those truths which matter.
In the future await the subordinate truths.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 102

#530

The soul is man’s task.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 102

#529

Moral perfection lies in feeling that we cannot do what we ought not to do.
Ethics culminates where the rule appears to be an expression of the person.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 101

#528

Every rebellion against the order of man is noble, so long as it does not disguise rebelliousness against the order of the world.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 101

#527

Behind every common noun arises the same common noun with a capital letter: behind love is Love, behind the encounter is the Encounter.
The universe escapes its captivity when in the individual instance we perceive the essence.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 101

#526

Not the closed-off completeness of a sphere, but rather the midday fullness of a pond reflecting the sky.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 101

#525

Any rule is preferable to caprice.
The soul without discipline disintegrates into the ugliness of a larva.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 101

#524

At certain moments of abundance God overflows into the world, like a sudden, unexpected spring gushing into the peace of midday.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 101

#523

Each moment has its own law, and not just the law which binds it to all other moments.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 100

#522

In order to understand another’s idea it is necessary to think it as one’s own.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 100

#521

Civilization is not an endless succession of inventions and discoveries, but the task of ensuring that certain things endure.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 100

#520

Instead of looking for explanations for the fact of inequality, anthropologists should look for the explanation for the notion of equality.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 100

#519

Happiness is that state of sensibility in which everything appears to have a reason for being.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 100

#518

Hypocrisy is not the hypocrite’s tool, but his prison.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 100

#517

The biblical prophet is not an augur of the future, but a witness to the presence of God in history.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 100

#516

Art criticism’s worst vice is the metaphorical abuse of philosophical vocabulary.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 99

#515

The bourgeoisie, despite everything, has been the only social class capable of judging itself.
Every critic of the bourgeoisie feeds off of bourgeois criticisms.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 99

#514

Each new truth we learn teaches us to read a different way.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 99

#513

The terms which the philosopher invents to express himself, and which the people eventually use as worn out metaphors, pass through an intermediate stage when the semi-educated employ them, with pedantic emphasis, in order to feign thoughts they do not have.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 99

#512

Contemporary literature, in any period, is the worst enemy of culture.
The reader’s limited time is wasted by reading a thousand mediocre books that blunt his critical sense and impair his literary sensibility.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 99

#511

I listen to every homily with involuntary irony.
My religion, just like my philosophy, comes down to trusting in God.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 98

#510

Resistance is futile when everything in the world is conspiring to destroy what we admire.
We are always left, however, with an incorruptible soul, so that we might contemplate, judge, and disdain.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 98

#509

Society tends to be unjust, but not in the way the conceited imagine.
There are always more masters who do not deserve their position than servants who do not deserve theirs.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 98

#508

Faith does not confound unbelief, but rather consumes it.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 98

#507

To believe is to penetrate into the heart of what we merely knew.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 98

#506

Serious books do not instruct, but rather demand explanations.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 98

#505

Educating the soul consists in teaching it to transform its envy into admiration.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 97

#504

The Christian has nothing to lose in a catastrophe.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 97

#503

The cultured man does not turn culture into a profession.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 97

#502

The Antichrist is, probably, man.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 97

#501

So long as we do not come across educated fools, education seems important.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 97

#500

A little patience in dealing with a fool helps us avoid sacrificing our good manners to our convictions.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 97

#499

Defending civilization consists, above all, in protecting it from man’s enthusiasm.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 97

#498

A sentence should be hard like a rock and shake like a branch.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 97

#497

To live with lucidity a simple, quiet, discreet life among intelligent books, loving a few persons.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 96

#496

Let us replace all those definitions of “the dignity of man,” which are only short, ecstatic prayers, with a simple, plain one: to do everything slowly.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 96

#495

If we demand that the object have only the form with which it best fulfills its functions, all objects of the same species converge ideally in a single form.
When technical solutions become perfect, man will die of boredom.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 96

#494

Bourgeois hegemony culminates with the industrialization of Communist society.
The bourgeoisie is not so much a social class as the ethos of industrial society itself.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 96

#493

Modern man destroys more when he constructs than when he destroys.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 96

#492

The reformers of contemporary society persist in decorating the cabins of a ship that is going under.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 96

#491

The Bible is not the voice of God, but of the man who encounters Him.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 95

#490

Intelligent discussion should be limited to clarifying differences.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 95

#489

My faith grows with the years, like the foliage of a silent spring.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 95

#488

In silent solitude only the soul capable of conquering in the most public disputes bears fruit.
The weakling begs for commotion.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 95

#487

As stupid as a catechism may be, it is always less so than a personal confession of faith.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 95

#486

Under the pretext of giving work to the hungry, the progressive sells the useless artifacts he produces.
The poor are industrialism’s pretext for enriching the rich man.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 95

#485

To industrialize a country, it is not enough to expropriate the rich man; it is necessary to exploit the poor man.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 95

#484

In order to call himself cultivated, it is not enough for an individual to adorn his specialty with bits and pieces of other specialties.
Culture is not a group of special objects but a subject’s specific attitude.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 94

#483

Truth is in history, but history is not the truth.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 94

#482

Let us not speak badly of nationalism.
Without the virulence of nationalism, Europe and the world would already be ruled by a technical, rational, uniform empire.
Let us give credit to nationalism for two centuries, at least, of spiritual spontaneity, of free expression of the national soul, of rich historical diversity.
Nationalism was the last spasm of the individual before the gray death awaiting it.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 94

#481

Totalitarian society is the common name for the social species whose scientific name is industrial society.
The embryo today allows us to foresee the adult animal’s deformity.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 94

#480

Industrial society is the expression and fruit of souls in which virtues destined to serve usurp the place of virtues destined to command.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 94

#479

It is not possible to choose between injustice and disorder. They are synonyms.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 93

#478

To be an aristocrat is to not believe that everything depends on the will.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 93

#477

Discipline is not so much a social necessity as an aesthetic obligation.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 93

#476

Whoever abandons himself to his instincts degrades his face as obviously as he degrades his soul.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 93

#475

The smile of the person we love is the only effective remedy for tedium.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 93

#474

Reason is a hand which presses down on our chest to ease the throbbing of our disordered heart.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 93

#473

Sensuality is the permanent possibility of rescuing the world from the captivity of its insignificance.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 93

#472

My faith fills my solitude with its hushed whisper of invisible life.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 93

#471

What is philosophy for the Catholic but the way intelligence lives its faith?

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 92

#470

What is vulgar is not what the crowd does, but rather what pleases it.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 92

#469

Aesthetics indicates to the artist in which region of the universe the beauty for which he is searching can be found, but it does not guarantee him that he will succeed in capturing it.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 92

#468

The man who denounces a politician’s intellectual limitations forgets that it is to them that he owes his successes.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 92

#467

Few men would put up with their lives if they did not feel like victims of chance.
To call justice injustice is the most popular of consolations.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 92

#466

Idle wealth is wealth which only serves to produce more wealth.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 92

#465

Denigrating progress is too easy. I aspire to the professorship in methodical regression.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 92

#464

A youth takes pride in his youth as if it were not a privilege enjoyed by even the most idiotic.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 91

#463

Every marriage between an intellectual and the Communist party ends in adultery.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 91

#462

A man is called a liberal if he does not understand that he is sacrificing liberty except when it is too late to save it.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 91

#461

Contempt for “formalities” is a guarantee of imbecility.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 91

#460

The “general will” is the fiction which allows the democrat to pretend that there is a reason, other than simple fear, to bow to a majority.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 91

#459

The poor man does not envy the rich man for the opportunities for noble behavior which wealth facilitates, but rather for the degradations which wealth makes possible.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 91

#458

Catholicism teaches what man would like to believe yet does not dare to.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 91

#457

When he is defeated by a majority, the true democrat should not merely acknowledge that he was defeated, but also confess that he was wrong.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 90

#456

To be intelligent in politics, it suffices to go up against a dumber opponent.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 90

#455

To mature consists not in renouncing our desires, but in admitting that the world is not obliged to fulfill them.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 90

#454

A Catholic thought does not rest until it puts the chorus of the heroes and the gods in order around Christ.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 90

#453

The Marxist does not believe it possible to condemn without adulterating what he condemns.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 90

#452

The democrat’s electoral strategy is based on a contemptuous notion of man totally contrary to the flattering notion he spreads in his speeches.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 90

#451

Communism used to be a vocation; today it is a career.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 90

#450

Democratic massacres belong to the logic of the system.
Ancient massacres to the illogicality of man.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 89

#449

Peace does not flourish except among moribund nations. Under the sun of iron hegemonies.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 89

#448

To love is to hover without rest around the impenetrability of a being.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 89

#447

Marxism will only rest when it has transformed peasants and workers into petty-bourgeois office clerks.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 89

#446

In this century of nomadic crowds profaning every illustrious place, the only homage a respectful pilgrim can render a venerable shrine is not to visit it.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 89

#445

That Christianity cures social diseases, as some say, or that, on the contrary, it poisons the society that adopts it, as others assert, are theses that interest the sociologist but are of no interest for a Christian.
A convert to Christianity has converted because he believes it is true.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 89

#444

To make a catastrophe inevitable, there is nothing more effective than to call an assembly to propose reforms to avert it.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 88

#443

Revolutionary intellectuals have the historic mission of inventing the vocabulary and the themes for the next tyranny.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 88

#442

The imbecile does not discover the radical misery of our condition except when he is sick, poor, or old.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 88

#441

A politician may not be capable of thinking any stupidity, but he is always capable of saying it.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 88

#440

Dialogue between Communists and Catholics has become possible ever since Communists started to falsify Marx and Catholics Christ.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 88

#439

In democracies they call the “directing class” that class which the popular vote does not let direct anything.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 88

#438

The freer man believes he is, the easier it is to indoctrinate him.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 88

#437

Yesterday progressivism captured the unwary by offering them freedom; today all it needs to do is offer them food.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 87

#436

The idea of “the free development of personality” seems admirable as long as one does not meet an individual whose personality has developed freely.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 87

#435

“Culture” is not so much the religion of atheists as of the uncultured.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 87

#434

The history of neither a people nor an individual is intelligible to us if we do not acknowledge that the individual’s or the people’s soul can die without either the people or the individual dying.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 87

#433

The “rational,” the “natural,” the “legitimate,” are nothing more than what is customary.
To live under a political constitution that endures, among customs that endure, is the only thing that allows us to believe in the legitimacy of the ruler, in the rationality of habits, and in the naturalness of things.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 87

#432

The egalitarian passion is a perversion of the critical sense: atrophy of the faculty of discrimination.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 86

#431

If liberty is to last, it should be the goal of social organization and not the starting point.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 86

#430

Liberty is indispensable not because man knows what he wants and who he is, but so that he can find out who he is and what he wants.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 86

#429

In the dismal and suffocating building of the world, the cloister is the space open to the sun and to the air.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 86

#428

“Rational” is everything with which routine dealings familiarize us.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 86

#427

The first step of wisdom is to admit, with good humor, that there is no reason why our ideas should interest anybody.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 86

#426

The whims of the incompetent crowd are called public opinion, and the expert’s judgments private opinion.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 85

#425

The preaching of progressives has so corrupted us that nobody believes that he is what he is, but only what he did not succeed in being.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 85

#424

Modern man calls his ambition a duty.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 85

#423

Man is more capable of heroic acts than of decent gestures.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 85

#422

To be Christians is to find ourselves before one from whom we cannot hide, before whom it is impossible to disguise ourselves.
It is to assume the burden of the truth, no matter whom it injures.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 85

#421

Sad like a biography.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 85

#420

In today’s political spectrum no party is closer than any other to the truth.
There are simply some that are farther away.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 85

#419

The progressive believes that everything soon becomes obsolete, except his ideas.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 84

#418

The soul should open itself up to foreign invasion, refuse to defend itself, favor the enemy, so that our authentic being appears and arises, not like a fragile structure protected by our timidity, but like our rock, our incorruptible granite.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 84

#417

In an authentic culture reason becomes sensibility.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 84

#416

To be a protagonist in the drama of life, it is enough to be a perfect actor, whatever the role one plays.
Life has no secondary roles, only secondary actors.

#415

A genuine vocation leads the writer to write only for himself: first out of pride, then out of humility.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 84

#414

Eroticism, sensuality, and love, when they do not converge in the same person, are nothing more, in isolation, than a disease, a vice, and foolishness.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 84

#413

The unforeseeable grace of an intelligent smile is enough to blast away the layers of tedium which the days deposit.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 83

#412

True talent consists in not making oneself independent from God.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 83

#411

Nothing is as difficult as learning that force too can be ridiculous.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 83

#410

Fear is the secret engine of this century’s endeavors.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 83

#409

Eroticism exhausts itself in promises.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 83

#408

Modern man does not love, but takes refuge in love; does not hope, but takes refuge in hope; does not believe, but takes refuge in a dogma.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 83

#407

The authentic revolutionary rebels in order to abolish the society he hates; today’s revolutionary revolts in order to inherit one he covets.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 83

#406

Every revolution makes us nostalgic for the previous one.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 83

#405

Progress is the scourge God has chosen for us.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 82

#404

The traditional commonplace scandalizes modern man.
The most subversive book in our time would be a compendium of old proverbs.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 82

#403

The imbecility of his passions saves man from the imbecility of his dreams.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 82

#402

A totalitarian state is the structure into which societies crystallize under demographic pressures.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 82

#401

Two persons inspire particular pity today: the bourgeois politician whom history patiently silences, and the Marxist philosopher whom history patiently refutes.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 82

#400

Our time is more full of worn out Marxists than apostate Marxists.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 82

#399

Consumption, for the progressive, is justified only as a means of production.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 82

#398

The practical politician dies from the consequences of the theories he disdains.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 81

#397

The history of man is not the catalog of his situations, but the account of his unpredictable ways of using them.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 81

#396

Man pays for the intoxication of liberation with the tedium of liberty.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 81

#395

Only the trivial protects us from boredom.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 81

#394

Population growth disquiets the demographer only when he fears that it will impede economic progress or make it harder to feed the masses.
But that man needs solitude, that human proliferation produces cruel societies, that distance is required between men so that the spirit might breathe, does not interest him.
The quality of a man does not matter to him.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 81

#393

The inferior man is always right in an argument, because the superior man has condescended to argue.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 81

#392

Universal suffrage is not designed to make the majority’s interests triumph, but to make the majority believe their interests triumph.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 80

#391

Common life is so miserable that the most unfortunate man can be the victim of a neighbor’s envy.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 80

#390

Individual egoism believes it is absolved when it is compressed together into a collective egoism.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 80

#389

Modern man does not imagine any end higher than to serve the anonymous whims of his fellow citizens.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 80

#388

Modern architecture knows how to erect industrial shacks, but it does not succeed in building either a palace or a temple.
This century will leave behind only the tire-tracks of the transports it employed in the service of our most sordid greed.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 80

#387

The progressive’s intelligence is never more than the accomplice of his career.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 80

#386

It is not only between generations where experience is lost, but also between periods of an individual life.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 80

#385

Catholicism does not solve all problems but it is the only doctrine that raises them all.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 79

#384

The legitimacy of power depends not on its origin, but on its ends.
Nothing is forbidden to power if its origin grants it legitimacy, as the democrat teaches.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 79

#383

To reform society by means of laws is the dream of the incautious citizen and the discrete preamble to every tyranny.
Law is the juridical form of custom or the trampling of liberty.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 79

#382

The greater the importance of an intellectual activity, the more ridiculous the pretension in enhancing the competence of one who carries it out.
A dentistry degree is respectable, but a philosophy degree is grotesque.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 79

#381

Love loves the ineffableness of the individual.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 79

#380

Politicians, in a democracy, are the condensers of idiocy.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 79

#379

The proletarian does not detest the bourgeoisie for any reason other than the economic difficulty of imitating it.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 78

#378

What is called the social problem is the urgent necessity of finding a balance between the evident equality of men and their evident inequality.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 78

#377

Let us repudiate the abominable suggestion that we should renounce friendship and love in order to banish misfortune.
On the contrary, let us mingle our souls just as we weave our bodies together.
May the beloved be the land of our shattered roots.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 78

#376

Love is essentially the adherence of the spirit to another naked body.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 78

#375

The leftist screams that freedom is dying when his victims refuse to finance their own murders.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 78

#374

A vocabulary of ten words is enough for a Marxist to explain history.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 78

#373

Adolescents take wing with the disdain of eagles and soon crash softly into the ground like pretentious chickens.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 77

#372

Man tends to exercise all his powers. The impossible seems to him the only legitimate limit.
A civilized man, however, is one who for various reasons refuses to do everything he can.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 77

#371

To love is to understand the reason God had for creating what we love.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 77

#370

Yesterday we believed that it was sufficient to scorn what man achieves; today we know that we must also scorn what he desires.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 77

#369

The pessimists prophesy a future of rubble, but the optimistic prophets are even more horrifying when they proclaim the future city where baseness and boredom dwell, in intact beehives.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 77

#368

To appreciate the ancient or the modern is easy; but to appreciate the obsolete is the triumph of authentic taste.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 77

#367

To the masses what matters is not whether they are free, but whether they believe they are free.
Whatever cripples their freedom does not alarm them, unless they are told it should.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 76

#366

Loyalty is sincere as long as it does not believe itself to be a virtue.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 76

#365

The poor man’s patience in modern society is not virtue but cowardice.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 76

#364

When individual greeds come together, we customarily christen them “noble popular aspirations.”

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 76

#363

Collective representations, today, are opinions which the organs of propaganda impose.
The collective, today, is not what many sell, but what many buy.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 76

#362

Progressivist hope does not swell up except in speeches.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 76

#361

No being deserves our interest for more than an instant, or for less than a lifetime.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 76

#360

In the arts what goes by the name of authenticity is the convention of the day.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 75

#359

To patronize the poor has always been, in politics, the surest way to enrich oneself.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 75

#358

The conscience discovers its freedom when it feels obliged to condemn what it approves.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 75

#357

Abstract art is not illegitimate but limited.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 75

#356

The modern state fabricates the opinions which it later respectfully collects under the name of public opinion.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 75

#355

Modern individualism is nothing but claiming as one’s own the opinions everyone shares.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 75

#354

What is great, for the sensibility, is not the sum of the parts, but the quality of certain wholes.
Greatness of size—every modern building shows this—is not related to monumental greatness.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 75

#353

Love is not a mystery but a place where mystery is dissolved.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 74

#352

Questions only fall silent when faced with love.
“Why love?” is the only impossible question.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 74

#351

Resignation to error is the beginning of wisdom.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 74

#350

To live is modern man’s only value.
Even the modern hero does not die except in the name of life.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 74

#349

The threat of collective death is the only argument which shakes humanity’s complacency today.
Atomic death troubles it even more than its increasing degradation.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 74

#348

The soul that climbs to perfection often abandons the lands conquered down below, where subordinate demons install themselves, ridiculing and dirtying that soul.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 74

#347

There is no spiritual victory which need not be won anew each day.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 73

#346

The prejudice of not having prejudices is the most common one of all.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 73

#345

The modern sensibility, instead of demanding the repression of envy, demands that we suppress the object which arouses it.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 73

#344

The virile age of thought is fixed not by experience, nor by years, but by the encounter with certain philosophies.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 73

#343

What draws us away from God is not sensuality but abstraction.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 73

#342

Christianity does not deny the splendor of the world, but rather invites us to search for its origin, to climb towards its pure snow.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 73

#341

Even between fanatical egalitarians, the briefest encounter reestablishes human inequalities.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 72

#340

The South American intellectual, in order to feed himself, imports junk from the European market.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 72

#339

Life is an instrument of intelligence.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 72

#338

Individuals or nations have distinct virtues and identical defects.
Baseness is our common patrimony.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 72

#337

The basic problem of every former colony—the problem of intellectual servitude, of impoverished tradition, of subaltern spirituality, of inauthentic civilization, of obligatory and shameful imitation—has been resolved for me with supreme simplicity: Catholicism is my native land.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 72

#336

Poetry which disdains poetic musicality becomes petrified in a graveyard of images.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 72

#335

The prophet who accurately foretells the growing corruption of a society is not believed, because the more that corruption grows, the less it is noticed by the corrupt.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 71

#334

Today more than ever man runs after any fool who invites him along on the trip, deaf to the lookout keeping watch on the ruined roads and the collapsed bridges.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 71

#333

I do not know of a sin which is not, for the noble soul, its own punishment.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 71

#332

Wisdom, in this century, consists above all in knowing how to put up with vulgarity without becoming upset.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 71

#331

Societies in agony struggle against history with the power of their laws, like the shipwrecked struggle against the waters with the power of their screams. Brief whirlpools.

#330

Each of life’s insults of a beloved countenance nourishes true love.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 71

#329

Liberal parties never understand that the opposite of despotism is not stupidity, but authority.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 71

#328

The reactionary longs to convince the majorities, the democrat to bribe them with the promise of others’ goods.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 70

#327

Neither imitation of the past, nor of the present, is an infallible remedy.
Nothing saves the mediocre from their mediocrity.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 70

#326

An intelligent man is one who maintains his intelligence at a temperature independent of his environment’s temperature.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 70

#325

Solitude is the laboratory where commonplaces are verified.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 70

#324

He who accepts the rank which nature assigns him does not turn into the mere absence of what he is not.
Even the most modest thing has, in its proper place, immeasurable worth.

#323

The believer is not a possessor of inherited property recorded in a land registry, but an admiral looking upon the shores of an unexplored continent.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 70

#322

Faith is what allows us to wander astray into any idea without losing the way out.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 70

#321

Evil, like the eyes, does not see itself.
May he tremble who sees himself as innocent.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 69

#320

A Catholic should simplify his life and complicate his thought.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 69

#319

Even when sin does assist in the construction of every society, modern society is the beloved child of the capital sins.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 69

#318

What is thought against the Church, unless it is thought from within the Church, lacks interest.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 69

#317

Hell is a place that can only be identified from paradise.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 69

#316

The communist hates capitalism with the Oedipus complex.
The reactionary views it only with xenophobia.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 69

#315

Democratic revolutions begin the executions as they announce the prompt abolition of the death penalty.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 68

#314

Unlike the Biblical archangel, Marxist archangels prevent man from escaping their paradises.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 68

#313

Layers of imbecility deposit themselves in the soul like sediment over the years.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 68

#312

There is no worse foolishness than the truth in the mouth of a fool.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 68

#311

Man lives himself as anguish or as a creature.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 68

#310

Adherence to Communism is the rite which allows the bourgeois intellectual to exorcise his uneasy conscience without abjuring his bourgeois identity.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 68

#309

A nation’s soul is born from an historical event, matures by accepting its destiny, and dies when it admires itself and imitates itself.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 68

#308

Virtue that does not doubt itself culminates in attacks against the world.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 67

#307

A work of art has, properly speaking, not meaning but power.
Its presumed meaning is the historical form of its power on the transitory spectator.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 67

#306

Love is the act which transforms its object from a thing into a person.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 67

#305

In a bourgeois country, just as in a Communist land, they disapprove of “escapism” as a solitary vice, as a debilitating and wretched perversion.
Modern society discredits the fugitive so that no one will listen to his account of his journeys. Art or history, man’s imagination or his tragic and noble destiny, these are not criteria which modern mediocrity will tolerate.
“Escapism” is the fleeting vision of abolished splendors and the probability of an implacable verdict on today’s society.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 67

#304

The fool does not content himself with violating an ethical rule: he claims that his transgression becomes a new rule.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 67

#303

Anguish over the decline of civilization is the affliction of a reactionary.
The democrat cannot lament the disappearance of something of which he is ignorant.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 66

#302

The democrat defends his convictions by declaring whoever attacks him obsolete.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 66

#301

Modern man does not escape the temptation to identify what is permitted with what is possible.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 66

#300

The ancient who denied pain, the modern who denies sin—they entangle themselves in identical sophisms.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 66

#299

A man with good manners excuses himself as he makes use of his rights.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 66

#298

Integrity in politics is not stupidity except in the eyes of the swindler.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 66

#297

When they begin demanding the total subjection of life to a code of ethics, they end up subjecting that code to life.
Those who refuse to absolve the sinner end up absolving the sin.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 66

#296

Professional worshipers of man believe they are authorized to scorn their fellow man.
The defense of human dignity allows them to be boors toward their neighbor.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 65

#295

Popular art is the art of the people which does not appear to the people to be art.
That which does appear to be art to the people is vulgar art.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 65