For who would dare to assert that eternal happiness can compensate for a single moment's human suffering

The loss of love is the loss of all rights, even though one had them all.

A sub-clerk in the post office is the equal of a conqueror if consciousness is common to them. All experiences are indifferent in this regard. There are some that do either a service or a disservice to man. They do him a service if he is conscious. Otherwise, that has no importance: a man's failures imply judgment, not of circumstances, but of himself.

May heaven protect us, cher monsieur, from being set on a pedestal by our friends!!!

Thinking of the future, establishing aims for oneself, having preferences-all this presupposes a belief in freedom, even if one occasionally ascertains that one doesn't feel it.

The important thing isn't the soundness or otherwise of the argument, but for it to make you think.

The love of God is a hard love. It demands total self-surrender, disdain of our human personality. And yet it alone can reconcile us to suffering and the deaths of children, it alone can justify them, since we cannot understand them, and we can only make God's will ours.