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.

Prayer consists simply in giving to God all the careful attention of which the soul is capable.

Every perfect life is a parable invented by God.

Human existence is so fragile a thing and exposed to such dangers that I cannot love without trembling.

At the centre of the human heart is the longing for an absolute good, a longing which is always there and is never appeased by any object in this world.

Every atheist is an idolater- unless he is worshipping the true God in his impersonal aspect. The majority of the pious are idolaters.

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.