The intelligent man who is proud of his intelligence is like the condemned man who is proud of his large cell.

Art is the symbol of the two noblest human efforts: to construct and to refrain from destruction.

The world needs saints who have genius, just as a plague-stricken town needs doctors.

To set up as a standard of public morality a notion which can neither be defined nor conceived is to open the door to every kind of tyranny.

Only an indirect method is effective. We do nothing if we have not first drawn back.

Contemplating an object fixedly with the mind, asking myself, 'What is it?' without thinking of any other object or relating it to anything else for hours on end.

All the natural movements of the soul are controlled by laws analogous to those of physical gravity. Grace is the only exception. Grace fills empty spaces, but it can only enter where there is a void to receive it, and it is grace itself which makes this void. The imagination is continually at work filling up all the fissures through which grace might pass.