The man who has known pure joy, if only for a moment ... is the only man for whom affliction is something devastating. At the same time he is the only man who has not deserved the punishment. But, after all, for him it is no punishment; it is God holding his hand and pressing rather hard. For, if he remains constant, what he will discover buried deep under the sound of his own lamentations is the pearl of the silence of God.

War is the supreme form of prestige.

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.

Every kind of reward constitutes a degradation of energy.

In the Church, considered as a social organism, the mysteries inevitably degenerate into beliefs.

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.

There can be a true grandeur in any degree of submissiveness, because it springs from loyalty to the laws and to an oath, and not from baseness of soul.