Friendship is a miracle by which a person consents to view from a certain distance, without coming any nearer, the very being who is as necessary to him as food.

When a contradiction is impossible to resolve except by a lie, then we know that it is really a door.

The world needs saints who have genius, just as a plague-stricken town needs doctors.

The intelligent man who is proud of his intelligence is like the condemned man who is proud of his large cell.

Every atheist is an idolater- unless he is worshipping the true God in his impersonal aspect. The majority of the pious are idolaters.

I also am other than what I imagine myself to be. To know this is forgiveness.

Our patriotism comes straight from the Romans. This is why French children are encouraged to seek inspiration for it in Corneille. It is a pagan virtue, if these two words are compatible. The word pagan, when applied to Rome, early possesses the significance charged with horror which the early Christian controversialists gave it. The Romans really were an atheistic and idolatrous people; not idolatrous with regard to images made of stone or bronze, but idolatrous with regard to themselves. It is this idolatry of self which they have bequeathed to us in the form of patriotism.