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

A beautiful woman looking at her image in the mirror may very well believe the image is herself. An ugly woman knows it is not.

Do not allow yourself to be imprisoned by any affection. Keep your solitude. The day, if it ever comes, when you are given true affection, there will be no opposition between interior solitude and friendship, quite the reverse. It is even by this infallible sigh that you will recognize it.

Intellectual adherence is never owed to anything whatsoever, for it is never in any degree a voluntary thing. Attention alone is voluntary. It alone forms the subject of an obligation.

He who has not God in himself cannot feel His absence.

A right which goes unrecognized by anybody is not worth very much.

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.