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

Today it is not nearly enough to be a saint, but we must have the saintliness demanded by the present moment, a new saintliness, itself also without precedent.

We only possess what we renounce; what we do not renounce escapes from us.

To set up as a standard of public morality a notion which can neither be defined nor conceived is to open the door to every kind of tyranny.

If Germany, thanks to Hitler and his successors, were to enslave the European nations and destroy most of the treasures of their past, future historians would certainly pronounce that she had civilized Europe.

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

A modern factory reaches perhaps almost the limit of horror. Everybody in it is constantly harassed and kept on edge by the interference of extraneous wills while the soul is left in cold desolate misery. What man needs is silence and warmth; what he is given is an icy pandemonium. Physical labor may be painful, but it is not degrading as such. It is not art; it is not science; it is something else, possessing an exactly equal value with art and science, for it provides an equal opportunity to reach the impersonal stage of attention.