“Art is the symbol of the two noblest human efforts: to construct and to refrain from destruction.”

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.

Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring. Imaginary good is boring; real good is always new, marvelous, intoxicating.

The beauty of the world is Christ’s tender smile for us coming through matter.

The sea is not less beautiful in our eyes because we know that sometimes ships are wrecked by it.

We must not wish for the disappearance of our troubles but for the grace to transform them.

Truth is sought not because it is truth but because it is good.

Love of God is pure when joy and suffering inspire an equal degree of gratitude.

A mind enclosed in language is in prison.

It is a fault to wish to be understood before we have made ourselves clear to ourselves.

It is only from the light which streams constantly from heaven that a tree can derive the energy to strike its roots deep into the soil. The tree is in fact rooted in the sky.

Whenever one tries to suppress doubt, there is tyranny.

It is only necessary to know that love is a direction and not a state of the soul. If one is unaware of this, one falls to despair at the first onslaught of affliction.

The virtue of hope is an orientation of the soul towards a transformation after which it will be wholly and exclusively love.

Sin is not a distance, it is a turning of our gaze in the wrong direction.

War is the supreme form of prestige.

You don’t make a photograph just with a camera. You bring to the act of photography all the pictures you have seen, the books you have read, the music you have heard, the people you have loved.

A still small voice spake unto me, ‘Thou art so full of misery, Were it not better not to be?

Not everybody trusts paintings but people believe photographs.

Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage.

Life is your art. An open, aware heart is your camera. A oneness with your world is your film. Your bright eyes and easy smile is your museum.

I can look at a fine art photograph and sometimes I can hear music.

True ease in writing comes from art, not chance, As those move easiest who have learned to dance.

To wake the soul by tender strokes of art, To raise the genius, and to mend the heart.