To write the lives of the great in separating them from their works necessarily ends by above all stressing their pettiness, because it is in their work that they have put the best of themselves.

Academic work is one of those fields which contain a pearl so precious that it is worth while to sell all our possessions, keeping nothing for ourselves, in order to be able to acquire it.

Education-whether its object be children or adults, individuals or an entire people-consists in creating motives.

The feeding of those that are hungry is a form of contemplation.

In struggling against anguish one never produces serenity; the struggle against anguish only produces new forms of anguish.

Armies under the control of ... a sovereign State cannot bring freedom to anyone.

Money destroys human roots wherever it is able to penetrate, by turning desire for gain into the sole motive. It easily manages to outweigh all other motives, because the effort it demands of the mind is so very much less. Nothing is so clear and so simple as a row of figures.