Only an indirect method is effective. We do nothing if we have not first drawn back.

Oppression that is clearly inexorable and invincible does not give rise to revolt but to submission.

The intelligent man who is proud of his intelligence is like the condemned man who is proud of his large cell.

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

When an apprentice gets hurt, or complains of being tired, the workmen and peasants have this fine expression: "It is the trade entering his body." Each time that we have some pain to go through, we can say to ourselves quite truly that it is the universe, the order and beauty of the world, and the obedience of God that are entering our body.

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 great error of nearly all studies of war... has been to consider war as an episode in foreign policies, when it is an act of interior politics.