It seemed to me certain, and I still think so today, that one can never wrestle enough with God if one does so out of pure regard for the truth. Christ likes us to prefer truth to him because, before being Christ, he is truth. If one turns aside from him to go toward the truth, one will not go far before falling into his arms.

The authentic and pure values, truth, beauty, and goodness, in the activity of a human being are the result of one and the same act, a certain application of the full attention to the object. Teaching should have no aim but to prepare, by training the attention, for the possibility of such an act. All the other advantages of instruction are without interest.

Attachment is the great fabricator of illusions; reality can be attained only by someone who is detached.

Evil when we are in its power is not felt as evil but as a necessity, or even a duty.

In what concerns divine things, belief is not appropriate. Only certainty will do. Anything less than certainty is unworthy of God.

Human existence is so fragile a thing and exposed to such dangers that I cannot love without trembling.

Force is as pitiless to the man who possesses it, or thinks he does, as it is to its victims; the second it crushes, the first it intoxicates. The truth is, nobody really possesses it.