Quotes from Peter Kreeft

Presumption and despair are opposite deadly sins. We hear a lot about despair, and the need for hope; but what is presumption?

For he believed not only that there was all truth somewhere but also that there was some truth everywhere.

Angels are made of pure spirit (mind and will) without matter, without bodies. Therefore they must communicate by mental telepathy.

a God without wrath saves a man without sin by mercy without judgment for a Heaven without a Hell through a Christ without a cross.

Heidegger says that "the fundamental question of metaphysics" is "why is there anything at all rather than nothing?" The fundamental question is not, as Plato thought, "what" a thing is (every Platonic dialogue is about that, about an essence, a definition, a concept, such as justice or piety or learning) but why it exists, why anything exists. Plato never asked that ultimate question. And the answer is God.

If the unhappiness of the wicked angels comes at length to an end, the happiness of the good will also come to an end, which is inadmissible.

he rewards our efforts with peace and joy.

that habituation is a slow, imperceptible sinking, whose point of no return is not clearly marked.

The cathedrals were not financed by taxes, on the poor or on the rich. They were financed by gifts, from rich and poor alike. They were not built at the expense of the poor; they were built by the poor, by the peasants who worked on them, and by their gifts. And the cathedrals were also built for the poor, who usually love them more than the rich do. (The rich build banks; the poor build cathedrals. We build what we love.)

Even God cannot make us love him. "Forced love" is a meaningless impossibility, like "virtuous sin".

Sacraments are that literal, that physical. Salvation is very physical. If the woman with the hemorrhage had touched the hem of St. Peter's garment instead of Christ's, her faith alone would not have healed her until it was joined to His body by her touch.—Unless God had willed to heal her that way, of course. God can work outside his sacraments, and often does. There

not human nature with perfect preternatural gifts such as it was in unfallen Adam.