The contemporary form of true greatness lies in a civilization founded upon the spirituality of work.

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.

Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.

The sea is not less beautiful in our eyes because we know that sometimes ships are wrecked by it.

Electra weeping for the dead Orestes. If we love God while thinking that he does not exist, he will manifest his existence.

It is not enough that France should be regarded as a country which enjoys the remains of a freedom acquired long ago. If she is still to count in the world--and if she does not intend to, she may as well perish--she must be seen by her own citizens and by all men as an ever-flowing source of liberty. There must not be a single genuine lover of freedom in the whole world who can have a valid reason for hating France.

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