Beauty captivates the flesh in order to obtain permission to pass right through to the soul. . . . When the feeling for beauty happens to be associated with the sight of some human being, the transference of love is made possible, at any rate in an illusory manner. But it is all the beauty of the world, it is universal beauty, for which we yearn.

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 essential thing to know about God is that God is Good. All the rest is secondary.

We do not obtain the most precious gifts by going in search of them but by waiting for them.

Algebra and money are essentially levelers; the first intellectually, the second effectively.

If we go down into ourselves, we find that we possess exactly what we desire.

Everything without exception which is of value in me comes from somewhere other than myself, not as a gift but as a loan which must be ceaselessly renewed.