The villagers seldom leave the village; many scientists have limited and poorly cultivated minds apart from their specialty.

A hurtful act is the transference to others of the degradation which we bear in ourselves.

Never react to an evil in such a way as to augment it.

It may be that vice, depravity, and crime are nearly always, or even perhaps always, in their essence, attempts to eat beauty, to eat what we should only look at.

It is much easier to imagine ourselves in the place of God the Creator than in the place of Christ crucified.

To wish to escape from solitude is cowardice. Friendship is not to be sought, not to be dreamed, not to be desired; it is to be exercised (it is a virtue).

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.