Sheer intellectual greatness is never so attractive, never appeals so much to the imagination and to the emotions as greatness of a more practical kind. That is why Napoleon, Caesar, and Joan of Arc will always exercise a greater influence. Yet intellectual greatness must surely have a prior claim to nobility. “Man’s whole dignity,” says Pascal, “consists simply in thought.” Hence, no influence can be more ennobling than the influence of St. Thomas.
–A. G.Sertillanges, Thomas Aquinas: Scholar, Poet, Mystic, Saint
St. Thomas Aquinas
