Misfortunes leave wounds which bleed drop by drop even in sleep; thus little by little they train man by force and dispose him to wisdom in spite of himself. Man must learn to think ofhimself as a limited and dependent being; and only suffering teaches him this.

Our science is like a store filled with the most subtle intellectual devices for solving the most complex problems, and yet we are almost incapable of applying the elementary principles of rational thought.

Two forces rule the universe: light and gravity.

A mind enclosed in language is in prison.

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

We have to endure the discordance between imagination and fact. It is better to say, “I am suffering,” than to say, “This landscape is ugly.

The same suffering is much harder to bear for a high motive than for a base one. The people [during World War II] who stood motionless, from one to eight in the morning, for the sake of having an egg, would have found it very difficult to do in order to save a human life.