The entire universe is nothing but a great metaphor.

Every time that I think of the crucifixion of Christ, I commit the sin of envy.

At the centre of the human heart is the longing for an absolute good, a longing which is always there and is never appeased by any object in this world.

Christ himself came down and took possession of me. . . I had never foreseen the possibility of that, of a real contact, person to person, here below, between a human being and God. . . in this sudden possession of me by Christ, neither my sense nor my imagination had any part: I only felt in the midst of my suffering the presence of a love.

If we concentrate our attention on trying to solve a problem of geometry, and if at the end of an hour we are no nearer to doing so than at the beginning, we have nevertheless been making progress each minute of that hour in another more mysterious dimension. Without knowing or feeling it, this apparent barren affort has brought more light into the soul.

Whenever a human being, through the commission of a crime, has become exiled from good, he needs to be reintegrated with it through suffering. The suffering should be inflicted with the aim of bringing the soul to recognize freely some day that its infliction was just.

More than in any other performing arts the lack of respect for acting seems to spring from the fact that every layman considers himself a valid critic.