Grace fills empty spaces, but it can only enter where there is a void to receive it, and it is grace itself which makes this void.

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

Imagination and fiction make up more than three quarters of our real life.

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

Humility is attentive patience.

Christians ought to suspect that affliction is the very essence of creation. To be a created thing is not necessarily to be afflicted, but it is necessarily to be exposed to affliction. ... Affliction is the surest sign that God wishes to be loved by us; it is the most precious evidence of His tenderness.

The real stumbling-block of totalitarian regimes is not the spiritual need of men for freedom of thought; it is men's inability to stand the physical and nervous strain of a permanent state of excitement, except during a few years of their youth.