“Modern life is given over to immoderation. Immoderation invades everything: actions and thought, public and private life.”

There are only two things that pierce the human heart. One is beauty. The other is affliction.

Purity is the ability to contemplate defilement.

The world is God’s language to us.

If you want to know what a man is really like, take notice of how he acts when he loses money.

Stars and blossoming fruit-trees: utter permanence and extreme fragility give an equal sense of eternity.

A hurtful act is the transference to others of the degradation which we bear in ourselves.

When once a certain class of people has been placed by the temporal and spiritual authorities outside the ranks of those whose life has value, then nothing comes more naturally to men than murder.

The glossy surface of our civilization hides a real intellectual decadence.

Compassion directed toward oneself is true humility.

It is not religion but revolution which is the opium of the people.

A man thinks he is dying for his country,” said Anatole France, “but he is dying for a few industrialists.” But even that is saying too much. What one dies for is not even so substantial and tangible as an industrialist.

I also am other than what I imagine myself to be. To know this is forgiveness.

Evil when we are in its power is not felt as evil but as a necessity, or even a duty.

For when two beings who are not friends are near each other there is no meeting, and when friends are far apart there is no separation.

Love is not consolation, it is light.

God is rich in mercy. I know this wealth of his with the certainty of experience, I have touched it.