There are only two things that pierce the human heart. One is beauty. The other is affliction.

It is not through the way in which someone speaks about God that I can see whether that person has passed through the crucible of Divine Love, but through the way the person speaks to me about things here on earth.

One has only the choice between God and idolatry. There is no other possibility. For the faculty of worship is in us, and it is either directed somewhere into this world, or into another.

The notion of obligations comes before that of rights, which is subordinate and relative to the former. A right is not effectual by itself, but only in relation to the obligation to which it corresponds.

It seemed to me certain, and I still think so today, that one can never wrestle enough with God if one does so out of pure regard for the truth. Christ likes us to prefer truth to him because, before being Christ, he is truth. If one turns aside from him to go toward the truth, one will not go far before falling into his arms.

Friendship is a miracle by which a person consents to view from a certain distance, without coming any nearer, the very being who is as necessary to him as food.

We do injury to a child if we bring it up in a narrow Christianity, which prevents it from ever becoming capable of perceiving that there are treasures of purest gold to be found in non-Christian civilizations. Laical education does an even greater injury to children. It covers up those treasures, and those of Christianity as well.