Men don't achieve truth because they lack humility and love of truth. They won't criticize their own beliefs. Truth would overwhelm them.

The soul may be immortal because she is fitted to rise towards that which is neither born nor dies, towards that which exists substantially, necessarily, invariably, that is to say towards God.

The obscure only exists that it may cease to exist. In it lies the opportunity of all victory and all progress. Whether it call itself fatality, death, night, or matter, it is the pedestal of life, of light, of liberty and the spirit. For it represents resistance -- that is to say, the fulcrum of all activity, the occasion for its development and its triumph.

Our systems, perhaps, are nothing more than an unconscious apology for our faults, a gigantic scaffolding whose object is to hide from us our favorite sin.

Our dependence outweighs our independence, for we are independent only in our desire, while we are dependent on our health, on nature, on society, on everything in us and outside us.

Man is a passion which brings a will into play, which works an intelligence.

To do what is impossible for talent is the mark of genius.