To write the lives of the great in separating them from their works necessarily ends by above all stressing their pettiness, because it is in their work that they have put the best of themselves.

The intelligent man who is proud of his intelligence is like the condemned man who is proud of his large cell.

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.

Attachment is the great fabricator of illusions; reality can be attained only by someone who is detached.

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.

I am not a Catholic; but I consider the Christian idea, which has its roots in Greek thought and in the course of the centuries has nourished all of our European civilization, as something that one cannot renounce without becoming degraded.

There is no detachment where there is no pain. And there is no pain endured without hatred or lying unless detachment is present too.

Nothing can have as its destination anything other than its origin. The contrary idea, the idea of progress, is poison.

Evil being the root of mystery, pain is the root of knowledge.

The role of the intelligence - that part of us which affirms and denies and formulates opinions is merely to submit.

I suffer more from the humiliations inflicted by my country than from those inflicted on her.

To be a hero or a heroine, one must give an order to oneself.

Real genius is nothing else but the supernatural virtue of humility in the domain of thought.

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.

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

Whatever debases the intelligence degrades the entire human being.

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.

A science which does not bring us nearer to God is worthless.

A hurtful act is the transference to others of the degradation which we bear in ourselves.

If Germany, thanks to Hitler and his successors, were to enslave the European nations and destroy most of the treasures of their past, future historians would certainly pronounce that she had civilized Europe.

Nothing is less instructive than a machine.

A self-respecting nation is ready for anything, including war, except for a renunciation of its option to make war.

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.

We must prefer real hell to an imaginary paradise.

Humility is attentive patience.

Beauty always promises, but never gives anything.

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.

Life does not need to mutilate itself in order to be pure.

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.

Every time that I think of the crucifixion of Christ, I commit the sin of envy.

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.

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 most important part of teaching is to teach what it is to know.

Those who are unhappy have no need for anything in this world but people capable of giving them their attention.

Every perfect life is a parable invented by God.

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.

In the Church, considered as a social organism, the mysteries inevitably degenerate into beliefs.

Human beings are so made that the ones who do the crushing feel nothing; it is the person crushed who feels what is happening. Unless one has placed oneself on the side of the oppressed, to feel with them, one cannot understand.

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.

When once a certain class of people has been placed by the temporal and spiritual authorities outside the ranks of those whose life has value, then nothing comes more naturally to men than murder.

Oppression that is clearly inexorable and invincible does not give rise to revolt but to submission.

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

I can, therefore I am.

The poison of skepticism becomes, like alcoholism, tuberculosis, and some other diseases, much more virulent in a hitherto virgin soil.

The only way into truth is through one's own annihilation; through dwelling a long time in a state of extreme and total humiliation.

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.

We are like horses who hurt themselves as soon as they pull on their bits - and we bow our heads. We even lose consciousness of the situation, we just submit. Any re-awakening of thought is then painful.

When a contradiction is impossible to resolve except by a lie, then we know that it is really a door.

There is one, and only one, thing in modern society more hideous than crime namely, repressive justice.