Horace McKenna, S.J.

When God lets me into heaven, I think I'll ask to go off in a corner somewhere for half an hour and sit down and cry because the strain is off, the work is done, and I haven't been unfaithful or disloyal. All these needs that I have known are in the hands of Providence and I don't have to worry any longer who's at the door, whose bread box is empty, whose baby is sick, whose house is shaken and discouraged, and whose children can't read.

[On the wall at Holy Trinity, Washington, D.C.]

Victor Hugo, Les Miserables

With nihilism no discussion is possible. For the logical nihilist doubts the existence of his interlocutor, and is not quite sure that he exists himself.

From his point of view it is possible that he may be to himself only a "conception of his mind."
However, he does not perceive that all he has denied he admits in a a mass by merely pronouncing the word "mind."

To sum up, no path is left open for thought by a philosophy that makes everything come to but one conclusion, the monosyllable "No."

To "No," there is but one reply: "Yes."

Nihilism has no scope. There is no nothing. Zero does not exist. Everything is something. Nothing is nothing.

Man lives by affirmation even more than he does by bread.

["Cosette," Book the Seventh, Chapter VI]

Victor Hugo, Les Miserables

There is, we are aware, a philosophy that denies the infinite. There is also a philosophy classed pathologically, which denies the sun; this philosophy is called blindness.

["Cosette," Book the Seventh, Chapter VI]

Victor Hugo, Les Miserables

The grandeur of democracy is that it denies nothing and renounces nothing of humanity. Close by the rights of Man, side by side with them, at least, are the rights of the Soul.

To crush out fanaticisms and revere the Infinite, such is the law. Let us not confine ourselves to falling prostrate beneath the tree of Creation and contemplating its vast ramifications full of stars. We have a duty to perform, to cultivate the human soul, to defend mystery against miracle, to adore the incomprehensible and reject the absurd; to admit nothing that is inexplicable excepting what is necessary, to purify faith and obliterate superstition from the face of religion, to remove the vermin from the garden of God.

["Cosette," Book the Seventh, Chapter V]

Victor Hugo, Les Miserables

To dream of the indefinite prolongation of things dead and the government of mankind by embalming; to restore dilapidated dogmas, regild the shrines, replaster the cloisters, reconsecrate the reliquaries, revamp old superstitions, replenish fading fanaticism, put new handles in worn-out sprinkling brushes, reconstitute monasticism; to believe in the salvation of society by the multiplication of parasites; to foist the past upon the present, all this seems strange. There are, however, advocates for such theories as these. These theorists, men of mind too, in other things, have a very simple process; they apply to the past a coating of what they term divine right, respect for our forefathers, time-honoured authority, sacred tradition, legitimacy; and they go about, shouting, "Here! take this, good people!" This kind of logic was familiar to the ancients; their soothsayers practised it. Rubbing over a black heifer with chalk, they would exclaim, "She is white." Bos cretatus.

As for ourselves, we distribute our respect, here and there, and spare the past entirely, provided it will but consent to be dead. But, if it insist upon being alive, we attack it and endeavour to kill it.
[. . .]

Let us attack, then.
Let us attack, but let us distinguish. The characteristic of truth is never to run to excess. What need has she of exaggeration? Some things must be destroyed, and some things must be merely cleared up and investigated. What power there is in a courteous and serious examination! Let us not therefore carry flame where light alone will suffice.

Les Miserables, "Cosette," Book Seventh, Chapter III.