The thing that is important is the thing that is not seen.

Freedom and constraint are two aspects of the same necessity, which is to be what one is and no other.

Of course I’ll hurt you. Of course you’ll hurt me. Of course we will hurt each other. But this is the very condition of existence. To become spring, means accepting the risk of winter. To become presence, means accepting the risk of absence.

Demagoguery enters at the moment when, for want of a common denominator, the principle of equality degenerates into the principle of identity.

Charity never humiliated him who profited from it, nor ever bound him by the chains of gratitude, since it was not to him but to God that the gift was made.

When a mystery is too overpowering, one dare not disobey.

When I find a woman attractive, I have nothing at all to say. I simply watch her smile. Intellectuals take apart her face in order to explain it bit by bit, but they no longer see the smile.