Our generation has seen one further step taken in the extension of the principles of Machiavelli. The doctrines associated with the name of Nietzsche… - Neville Figgis

The gulf between the Christian ideal of Love, and the ideals of Buddha, Schopenhauer and Tolstoi, which mean the destruction of the individual, is at bottom irreconcilable; yet both by adversaries and believers, the mistake of confounding the one with the other is often made.

The Gospel is the freshest and most original thing in the world, while the tone of modern intellectualism, with all its culture, is at bottom commonplace and middle aged.

From one point of view we might assert the the Middle Ages ended with the visit of Nogaret to Anagni, and from another it might be said to end only when the troops of Victor Emmanuel entered Rome and the Lord of the world became the prisoner of the Vatican, and of course it ended at different times in different places. Hence arises the extreme difficulty of disentangling the conflicting tendencies and complex political combination of our period.