Quotes from Peter Kreeft

when a subject corrects his prelate, he ought to do so in a becoming manner, not with impudence and harshness but with gentleness and respect. . . .

The purpose of Purgatory is to completely internalize, in your own individual soul, what Christ has completely accomplished in objective reality in His Passion. Nothing

The flood of love will fill all the containers to the fullest, but some containers will be larger than others.

Second, the origin of evil is not the Creator but the creature's freely choosing sin and selfishness.

Christians are good citizens, and take human laws very seriously, for religious reasons, not just for secular reasons. That's why they are better citizens than atheists, and certainly better citizens than moral relativists and subjectivists: they have stronger motives for obedience.

More than five billion

are more like Dog and Cat and Bird than like Lassie and Fido and Spot. Therefore

Both very liberal and very conservative Protestants are deeply threatened by Catholicism. For the liberals, "the only good Catholic is a bad Catholic", as Fr. Rutler gibes. And for many fundamentalists, Catholics are pagans, not even Christians: Church-worshipers, Pope-worshipers, Mary-worshipers, saint-worshipers, superstition-worshipers, sacrament-worshipers, idol-worshipers, and works-worshipers.

If anyone doubts its infallible conclusion, he infallibly shows that he has never really performed the experiment.

Spirits have more possibilities for nearly everything than do bodies—for example, more pleasures and pains, and more subtle and profound pleasures and pains, than bodies.

The root of pride is found to consist in man not being in some way subject to God and His rule.

I will not serve"—

the way in which He worked miracles, namely because He worked miracles . . . of His own power, and not by praying (petitioning), as others do. .

Pride is really very simple. It is the attitude of the spoiled brat: "I want what I want when I want it, and if you say No to me, I hate you." "Thy will be done" is the essential prayer of the saint; "my will be done" is the essential demand of the sinner.

Suffering together builds togetherness, and if togetherness is more important for us and for our joy than freedom from suffering is, then God is good to allow this suffering.

There is a legend that in every age God spares the world the destruction it deserves only because there are a certain number of Abrahams, righteous men and women who keep the world alive by their righteousness and their prayers, by the mass and the gravity of their righteousness reverberating on the walls of the divine mercy. No one but God knows who these righteous are or how many there are.

There is no equality among angels

You can be just as certain that God will give you little pieces of Heaven, little appetizers for Heaven, for the rest of your life on earth as you can be certain that He will give you the fullness of Heaven when you die.

However, when once perfect happiness has been attained, nothing will remain to be desired because then there will be full enjoyment of God

desire will be at rest, not only our desire for God but all our desires; so that the joy of the blessed is full to perfection—indeed, over-full, since they will obtain more than they were capable of desiring

democracy is probably intrinsically the best form of government, not because all men are equal in wisdom and virtue, or because all men are so good and wise that they should be given as much power as possible, but because all men are so foolish and wicked that no one should be given very great power over others.

The most serious religious objection to Purgatory, on the part of Protestants, is that the anticipation of the pains of Purgatory detracts from a happy death ("blessed are the dead who from now on die in the Lord"—Rev 14:13). But that is like saying that the pains of labor detract from the joy of childbirth. Deferred happiness is still happiness. In

Yet one's joy will be greater than another's on account of a fuller participation of the divine happiness

the instinct Rousseau found in himself and followed: the instinct to deceive, rob, and seduce rich ladies and to abandon his own children.