As soon as men know that they can kill without fear of punishment or blame, they kill; or at least they encourage killers with approving smiles.

An atheist may be simply one whose faith and love are concentrated on the impersonal aspects of God.

Evil is neither suffering nor sin; it is both at the same time, it is something common to them both. For they are linked together; sin makes us suffer and suffering makes us evil, and this indissoluble complex of suffering and sin is the evil in which we are submerged against our will, and to our horror.

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

Whatever debases the intelligence degrades the entire human being.

All the natural movements of the soul are controlled by laws analogous to those of physical gravity. Grace is the only exception. Grace fills empty spaces, but it can only enter where there is a void to receive it, and it is grace itself which makes this void. The imagination is continually at work filling up all the fissures through which grace might pass.

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