Christ himself came down and took possession of me. . . I had never foreseen the possibility of that, of a real contact, person to person, here below, between a human being and God. . . in this sudden possession of me by Christ, neither my sense nor my imagination had any part: I only felt in the midst of my suffering the presence of a love.

The destruction of the past is perhaps the greatest of all crimes.

It is only from the light which streams constantly from heaven that a tree can derive the energy to strike its roots deep into the soil. The tree is in fact rooted in the sky.

On reaching a certain degree of pain we lose the world.

Sin is not a distance, it is a turning of our gaze in the wrong direction.

One of the most exquisite pleasures of human love - to serve the loved one without his knowing it - is only possible, as regards the love of God, through atheism.

A test of what is real is that it is hard and rough. Joys are found in it, not pleasure. What is pleasant belongs to dreams.