Humanism was not wrong in thinking that truth, beauty, liberty, and equality are of infinite value, but in thinking that man can get them for himself without grace.

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.

Sin is nothing else but the failure to recognize human wretchedness.

The whole evolution of present-day society tends to develop the various forms of bureaucratic oppression and to give them a sort of autonomy in regard to capitalism as such.

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

Imagination is always the fabric of social life and the dynamic of history. The influence of real needs and compulsions, of real interests and materials, is indirect because the crowd is never conscious of it.

One does not play Bach without having done scales. But neither does one play a scale merely for the sake of the scale.