“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.”

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.

Prayer consists simply in giving to God all the careful attention of which the soul is capable.

God’s love for us is not the reason for which we should love him. God’s love for us is the reason for us to love ourselves.

An atheist may be simply one whose faith and love are concentrated on the impersonal aspects of God.

If we go down into ourselves, we find that we possess exactly what we desire.