We have to endure the discordance between imagination and fact. It is better to say, “I am suffering,” than to say, “This landscape is ugly.
There are two atheisms of which one is a purification of the notion of God.
We have to believe in a God who is like the true God in everything except that he does not exist, since we have not reached the point where God exists.
He who has not God in himself cannot feel His absence.
When I think of the Crucifixion, I commit the sin of envy.
Belief in immortality is harmful because it is not in our power to conceive of the soul as really incorporeal. So this belief is in fact a belief in the prolongation of life, and it robs death of its purpose.
In struggling against anguish one never produces serenity the struggle against anguish only produces new forms of anguish.
To love purely is to consent to distance, it is to adore the distance between ourselves and that which we love.
Friendship is not to be sought, not to be dreamed, not to be desired; it is to be exercised (it is a virtue).
Men owe us what they imagine they will give us. We must forgive them this debt.
Affliction compels us to recognize as real what we do not think possible.
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 joy of learning is as indispensable in study as breathing is in running. Where it is lacking there are no real students, but only poor caricatures of apprentices who, at the end of their apprenticeship, will not even have a trade.
A beautiful woman looking at her image in the mirror may very well believe the image is herself. An ugly woman knows it is not.
It is impossible to forgive whoever has done us harm if that harm has lowered us. We have to think that it has not lowered us, but has revealed our true level.
Love of God is pure when joy and suffering inspire an equal degree of gratitude.
If three steps are taken without any other motive than the desire to obey God, those three steps are miraculous; they are equally so whether they take place on dry land or on water.
The sum of the particular intentions of God is the universe itself.
One must always be prepared to switch sides with justice, that fugitive of the winning camp.
It is to the prodigals…that the memory of their Father’s house comes back. If the son had lived economically he would never have thought of returning.
Liberty, taking the word in its concrete sense, consists in the ability to choose.
Fashion exerts more power in science than it does on the shape of hats.
There isn’t a man on earth who doesn’t at times pronounce an opinion on good and evil, even if it be only to find fault with somebody else.
A work of art has an author and yet when it is perfect it has something which is anonymous about it.
Those who love a cause are those who love the life which has to be led in order to serve it.
Those who serve a cause are not those who love that cause. They are those who love the life which has to be led in order to serve it – except in the case of the very purest and they are rare.
Grace fills empty spaces but it can only enter where there is a void to receive it and it is grace itself which makes this void.
If we go down into ourselves we find that we possess exactly what we desire.
A hateful act is the transference to others of the degradation we bear in ourselves.
Charity. To love human beings in so far as they are nothing. That is to love them as God does.
A hurtful act is the transference to others of the degradation which we bear in ourselves.
The intelligent man who is proud of his intelligence is like the condemned man who is proud of his large cell.
Those who love a cause are those who love the life which has to be led in order to serve it.
The future is made of the same stuff as the present.
Today Relative to Yesterday or Tomorrow The future is made of the same stuff as the present.
Those who are unhappy have no need for anything in this world but people capable of giving them their attention.
More than in any other performing arts the lack of respect for acting seems to spring from the fact that every layman considers himself a valid critic.
Two prisoners whose cells adjoin communicate with each other by knocking on the wall. The wall is the thing which separates them but is also their means of communication. It is the same with us and God. Every separation is a link.
The most important part of teaching is to teach what it is to know.
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.
Humanism was not wrong in thinking that truth, beauty, liberty, and equality are of infinite value, but in thinking that man can get them for himself without grace.
The intelligent man who is proud of his intelligence is like the condemned man who is proud of his large cell.
The role of the intelligence – that part of us which affirms and denies and formulates opinions is merely to submit.
Whatever debases the intelligence degrades the entire human being.
Imagination is always the fabric of social life and the dynamic of history. The influence of real needs and compulsions, of real interests and materials, is indirect because the crowd is never conscious of it.
It is an eternal obligation toward the human being not to let him suffer from hunger when one has a chance of coming to his assistance.
It is only the impossible that is possible for God. He has given over the possible to the mechanics of matter and the autonomy of his creatures.
Evil being the root of mystery, pain is the root of knowledge.
As soon as men know that they can kill without fear of punishment or blame, they kill; or at least they encourage killers with approving smiles.
Attachment is the great fabricator of illusions reality can be attained only by someone who is detached.
Imagination and fiction make up more than three quarters of our real life.
To want friendship is a great fault. Friendship ought to be a gratuitous joy, like the joys afforded by art or life.
There is one, and only one, thing in modern society more hideous than crime namely, repressive justice.
The future is made of the same stuff as the present.