“Contradiction is the lever of transcendence.”

Difficult as it is really to listen to someone in affliction, it is just as difficult for him to know that compassion is listening to him.

Equality is the public recognition, effectively expressed in institutions and manners, of the principle that an equal degree of attention is due to the needs of all human beings.

To be rooted is perhaps the most important and least recognized need of the human soul.

Pain and suffering are a kind of currency passed from hand to hand until they reach someone who receives them but does not pass them on.

Religion as a source of consolation is an obstacle to true faith.

Fortunately the sky is beautiful everywhere.

Everything which originates from pure love is lit with the radiance of beauty.

In struggling against anguish one never produces serenity; the struggle against anguish only produces new forms of anguish.

It is not through the way in which someone speaks about God that I can see whether that person has passed through the crucible of Divine Love, but through the way the person speaks to me about things here on earth.

Everything beautiful has a mark of eternity.

We only possess what we renounce; what we do not renounce escapes from us.

Power is the supreme end for all those who have not understood.

Human existence is so fragile a thing and exposed to such dangers that I cannot love without trembling.

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.