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

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.

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.

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.