We can only know one thing about God - that he is what we are not. Our wretchedness alone is an image of this. The more we contemplate it, the more we contemplate him.

Nothing can have as its destination anything other than its origin. The contrary idea, the idea of progress, is poison.

If you say to someone who has ears to hear: "What you are doing to me is not just," you may touch and awaken at its source the spirit of attention and love. But it is not the same with words like, "I have the right..." or "you have no right to..." They evoke a latent war and awaken the spirit of contention.

Sin is nothing else but the failure to recognize human wretchedness.

Religion is a form of nourishment. It is difficult to appreciate the flavor and food-value of something one has never eaten.

I suffer more from the humiliations inflicted by my country than from those inflicted on her.

Evil is license, and that is why it is monotonous: everything has to be drawn from ourselves. One is condemned to false infinity. That is hell itself.