 To set up as a standard of public morality a notion which can neither be defined nor conceived is to open the door to every kind of tyranny. |
| A mind enclosed in language is in prison. |
| Nothing can have as its destination anything other than its origin. The contrary idea, the idea of progress, is poison. |
| The danger is not lest the soul should doubt whether there is any bread, but lest, by a lie, it should persuade itself that it is not hungry. |
| We can only know one thing about God - that he is what we are not. Our wretchedness alone is an image of this. The more we contemplate it, the more we contemplate him. |
| Nothing is less instructive than a machine. |
| 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. |
| Who were the fools who spread the story that brute force cannot kill ideas? Nothing is easier. And once they are dead they are no more than corpses. |
| Life does not need to mutilate itself in order to be pure. |
| 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. |
| The mysteries of faith are degraded if they are made into an object of affirmation and negation, when in reality they should be an object of contemplation. |
| 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. |
| To be rooted is perhaps the most important and least recognized need of the human soul. |
| It is not the cause for which men took up arms that makes a victory more just or less, it is the order that is established when arms have been laid down. |
| The only hope of socialism resides in those who have already brought about in themselves, as far as is possible in the society of today, that union between manual and intellectual labor which characterizes the society we are aiming at. |
| Beauty always promises, but never gives anything. |
| Culture is an instrument wielded by teachers to manufacture teachers, who, in their turn, will manufacture still more teachers. |
| Every time that I think of the crucifixion of Christ, I commit the sin of envy. |
| One cannot imagine St. Francis of Assisi talking about rights. |
| A doctrine serves no purpose in itself, but it is indispensable to have one if only to avoid being deceived by false doctrines. |
