Sin is not a distance, it is a turning of our gaze in the wrong direction.

Nothing is less instructive than a machine.

If you want to know what a man is really like, take notice of how he acts when he loses money.

All those who possess in its pure state the love of their neighbour and the acceptance of the order of the world, inclucing affliction-all those, even should they live and die to all appearances atheists, are surely saved.

We must prefer real hell to an imaginary paradise.

The man who has known pure joy, if only for a moment ... is the only man for whom affliction is something devastating. At the same time he is the only man who has not deserved the punishment. But, after all, for him it is no punishment; it is God holding his hand and pressing rather hard. For, if he remains constant, what he will discover buried deep under the sound of his own lamentations is the pearl of the silence of God.

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