It is human misery and not pleasure which contains the secret of the divine wisdom.

The payment of debts is necessary for social order. The non-payment is quite equally necessary for social order. For centuries humanity has oscillated, serenely unaware, between these two contradictory necessities.

The human soul has need of security and also of risk. The fear of violence or of hunger or of any other extreme evil is a sickness of the soul. The boredom produced by a complete absence of risk is also a sickness of the soul.

Contradiction itself, far from always being a criterion of error, is sometimes a sign of truth.

Sin is not a distance, it is a turning of our gaze in the wrong direction.

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

The notion of obligations comes before that of rights, which is subordinate and relative to the former. A right is not effectual by itself, but only in relation to the obligation to which it corresponds.