The Southerner is usually tolerant of those weaknesses that proceed from innocence.
Nine-tenths of our measures for preventing vice are really protective towards it, because they ward off the penalty.
It seems that whatever we do is somehow beyond reproach - murder, rape, drunk driving - as long as we go on a TV show and apologize.
The dangers of apparent self-sufficiency explain why Our Lord regards the vices of the feckless and dissipated so much more leniently than the vices that lead to worldly success.
Abortion... was probably regarded by the average Roman of the later days of Paganism much as Englishmen in the last century regarded convivial excesses, as certainly wrong, but so venial as scarcely to deserve censure.
I like them all - I don't always approve. I see myself as a sort of benevolent uncle to these characters, and I can see why they do what they do; sometimes they make some mistakes, but at heart I think they're decent.
Membership in the closed society of the motion-picture industry is almost never revoked for moral failings.
Who shall resist Anti-Christ when he comes if we show such patience towards the vices and crimes of his precursors? By such leniency, we encourage kings to become tyrants and tempt them to withdraw every privilege and all jurisdiction from the Churches.
Beauty (was)a gift which, in the eyes of New York, justified every success, and excused a certain number of failings.
