We make an idol of truth itself; for truth apart from charity is not God, but His image and idol, which we must neither love nor worship.

The exterior must be joined to the interior to obtain anything from God, that is to say, we must kneel, pray with the lips, and soon, in order that proud man, who would not submit himself to God, may be now subject to the creature.

Contradiction is not a sign of falsity, nor the lack of contradiction a sign of truth.

How vain painting is-we admire the realistic depiction of objects which in their original state we don't admire at all.

How shall one who is so weak in his childhood become really strong when he grows older? We only change our fancies.

I can well conceive a man without hands, feet, head. But I cannot conceive man without thought; he would be a stone or a brute.

Let us imagine a number of men in chains and all condemned to death, where some are killed each day in the sight of the others, and those who remain see their own fate in that of their fellows and wait their turn, looking at each other sorrowfully and without hope. It is an image of the condition of man.