“There is only one fault, only one: our inability to feed upon light.”

What a country calls its vital economic interests are not the things which enable its citizens to live, but the things which enable it to make war. Petrol is more likely than wheat to be a cause of international conflict.

It is grace that forms the void inside us and it is grace that can fill the void.

We are like plants which have the one choice of being in or out of the light.

Imagination and fiction make up more than three quarters of our real life.

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

Patriotism is idolatry of the self.

Every being cries out in silence to be read differently. Do not be indifferent to these cries.

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

To be always relevant, you have to say things which are eternal.

It is much easier to imagine ourselves in the place of God the Creator than in the place of Christ crucified.

Contradiction is the lever of transcendence.

Even if our efforts of attention seem for years to be producing no result, one day a light that is in exact proportion to them will flood the soul.

To die for God is not a proof of faith in God. To die for an unknown and repulsive convict who is a victim of injustice, that is a proof of faith in God.

Never react to an evil in such a way as to augment it.

The extreme greatness of Christianity lies in the fact that it does not seek a supernatural remedy for suffering but a supernatural use for it.

Love: To feel with one’s whole self the existence of another being.

The fundamental problem most patients have is an inability to love themselves, having been unloved by others during some crucial part of their lives.

Sometimes I think that a parody of democracy could be more dangerous than a blatant dictatorship, because that gives people an opportunity to avoid doing anything about it.

I know now that what makes a fool is an inability to take even his own good advice.

Depression is the inability to construct a future.

No nation, savage or civilized, save only the United States of America, has confessed its inability to protect its women save by hanging, shooting, and burning alleged offenders

Old people love to give good advice; it compensates them for their inability to set a bad example.

A notorious inability to express emotions makes human beings the only animals capable of suicide.

The inability to live in the present lies in the fear of leaving the sheltered position of anticipation or memory, and so of admitting that this is the only life that one is ever likely (heavenly intervention aside) to live.