The more a man loves, the more he suffers. The sum of possible grief for each soul is in proportion to its degree of perfection.

We are always making God our accomplice, that so we may legalize our own iniquities. Every successful massacre is consecrated by a Te Deum, and the clergy have never been wanting in benedictions for any victorious enormity.

There is no repose for the mind except in the absolute; for feeling, except in the infinite; for the soul, except in the divine.

Materialism coarsens and petrifies everything, making everything vulgar, and every truth false.

Melancholy is at the bottom of everything, just as at the end of all rivers is the sea. Can it be otherwise in a world where nothing lasts, where all that we have loved or shall love must die? Is death, then, the secret of life? The gloom of an eternal mourning enwraps, more or less closely, every serious and thoughtful soul, as night enwraps the universe.

Blessed be childhood, which brings down something of heaven into the midst of our rough earthliness.

When everything has its proper place in our minds, we are able to stand in equilibrium with the rest of the world.