Intellectual adherence is never owed to anything whatsoever, for it is never in any degree a voluntary thing. Attention alone is voluntary. It alone forms the subject of an obligation.

Attachment is a manufacturer of illusion and whoever wants reality ought to be detached.

Difficult as it is really to listen to someone in affliction, it is just as difficult for him to know that compassion is listening to him.

Someone who does not see a pane of glass is not aware of not seeing it.

When a man's life is destroyed or damaged by some wound or privation of soul or body, which is due to other men's actions or negligence, it is not only his sensibility that suffers but also his aspiration toward the good. Therefore there has been sacrilege towards that which is sacred in him.

The authentic and pure values, truth, beauty, and goodness, in the activity of a human being are the result of one and the same act, a certain application of the full attention to the object. Teaching should have no aim but to prepare, by training the attention, for the possibility of such an act. All the other advantages of instruction are without interest.

Evil being the root of mystery, pain is the root of knowledge.