A liking for truth at any cost is a passion that spares nothing and that nothing resists. It's a vice, at times a comfort, or a selfishness.

It's a kind of spiritual snobbery that makes people think they can be happy without money.

What I believe to be true I must therefore preserve. What seems to me so obvious, even against me, I must support.

The more I accuse myself, the more right I have to judge you. Even better, I make you judge yourself, which comforts me the more.

The world expects of Christians that they will raise their voices so loudly and clearly and so formulate their protest that not even the simplest man can have the slightest doubt about what they are saying. Further, the world expects of Christians that they will eschew all fuzzy abstractions and plant themselves squarely in front of the bloody face of history. We stand in need of folk who have determined to speak directly and unmistakably and come what may, to stand by what they have said.

The great courage is to stare as squarely at the light as at death.

In Italian museums are sometimes found little painted screens that the priest used to hold in front of the face of condemned men to hide the scaffold from them.