We are like plants which have the one choice of being in or out of the light.

Men owe us what we imagine they will give us. We must forgive them this debt.

Prayer consists simply in giving to God all the careful attention of which the soul is capable.

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.

Of two men who have no experience of God, he who denies him is perhaps nearer to him than the other.

The same suffering is much harder to bear for a high motive than for a base one. The people [during World War II] who stood motionless, from one to eight in the morning, for the sake of having an egg, would have found it very difficult to do in order to save a human life.

The extreme greatness of Christianity lies in the fact that it does not seek a supernatural remedy for suffering but a supernatural use for it.