Quotes from Peter Kreeft

If God is the Creator of all things and evil is a thing, then God is the Creator of evil and He is to be blamed for its existence. No, evil is not a thing but a wrong choice, or the damage done by a wrong choice. Evil is no more a positive thing than blindness is, but it is just as real.

Socrates: So even our walks are dangerous here. But you seem to have avoided the most dangerous thing of all. Bertha: What's that? Socrates: Philosophy. Bertha: Oh, we have philosophers here. Socrates: Where are they? Bertha: In the philosophy department. Socrates: Philosophy is not department. Bertha: Well, we have philosophers. Socrates: Are they dangerous? Bertha: Of course not. Socrates: Then they are not true philosophers.

It is reasonable to love the Absolute absolutely for the same reason it is reasonable to love the relative relatively.

I guarantee you that after you die you will not say 'I spent too much time praying; I wish I had watched more TV instead.

Saint Thomas Aquinas says, wisely, that the only way to drive out a bad passion is by a stronger good passion. The same is true of thoughts as of passions. When your mind wanders, like a child, your will must bring it back, like a mother. [. . .] The will-parent must discipline the mind-child, avoiding both the opposite extremes commonly made in disciplining either children or thoughts: tyranny or permissiveness.

The eye of the poet sees less clearly, but sees farther than the eye of the scientist.

God gives us not only the truth but also the ability to believe it; not only the new thing to see but also the new eye to see it with.

We pray to obey God, not to 'play God'. We pray, not to change God's mind, but to change our own; not to command God, but to let God command us. We pray to 'let God be God'. Prayer is our obedience to God even when it asks God for things, for God has commanded us to ask (Mt. 7:7).

All life is an emergency.

It is closer to the truth to say that God is crazy than that God is reasonable. I suspect God merely smiles when someone calls him crazy, but shakes His head and frowns when someone calls Him reasonable.

The only way God can strengthen his presence in our will is to weaken his presence in our feelings. Otherwise we would become spiritual cripples, unable to walk without emotional crutches. This is why he gives us dryness, sufferings, and failures.

We try too much and trust too little. Count the times God's Book tells us to try. Now count the times it tells us to trust.