“HE WHO has read the lives of the ancient fathers of the desert without being touched, without feeling profound admiration, and being filled with grave and lofty thoughts; he who, treading under his feet with indifference the ruins of an ancient abbey, has not called up in fancy the shades of the cenobites who lived and died there; he who passes coldly through the corridors and cells of convents half-demolished, and feels no recollections, and not even the curiosity to examine — he may close the annals of history, and may cease to study the beautiful and the sublime. There exist for him no historical phenomena, no beauty, no sublimity; his mind is in darkness, his heart is in the dust.”
— Jaime Luciano Balmes (1810-1848), Protestantism and Catholicity: Compared in Their Effects on the Civilization of Europe. Library of Alexandria. (Kindle Edition.)
