No human being escapes the necessity of conceiving some good outside himself towards which his thought turns in a movement of desire, supplication, and hope.

In struggling against anguish one never produces serenity; the struggle against anguish only produces new forms of anguish.

Whether the mask is labeled fascism, democracy, or dictatorship of the proletariat, our great adversary remains the apparatus—the bureaucracy, the police, the military. Not the one facing us across the frontier of the battle lines, which is not so much our enemy as our brothers' enemy, but the one that calls itself our protector and makes us its slaves. No matter what the circumstances, the worst betrayal will always be to subordinate ourselves to this apparatus and to trample underfoot, in its service, all human values in ourselves and in others.

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

To be rooted is perhaps the most important and least recognized need of the human soul.

A work of art has an author and yet, when it is perfect, it has something which is anonymous about it.

A self-respecting nation is ready for anything, including war, except for a renunciation of its option to make war.