The virtue of hope is an orientation of the soul towards a transformation after which it will be wholly and exclusively love.

If we concentrate our attention on trying to solve a problem of geometry, and if at the end of an hour we are no nearer to doing so than at the beginning, we have nevertheless been making progress each minute of that hour in another more mysterious dimension. Without knowing or feeling it, this apparent barren affort has brought more light into the soul.

We should do only those righteous actions which we cannot stop ourselves from doing.

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.

The whole of our civilization is founded on specialization, which implies the enslavement of those who execute to those who coordinate.

To be innocent is to bear the weight of the entire universe. It is to throw away the counterweight.

The contradictions the mind comes up against, these are the only realities, the criterion of the real. There is no contradiction in what is imaginary. Contradiction is the test of necessity.