God's love for us is not the reason for which we should love him. God's love for us is the reason for us to love ourselves.

With no matter what human being, taken individually, I always find reasons for concluding that sorrow and misfortune do not suit him; either because he seems too mediocre for anything so great, or, on the contrary, too precious to be destroyed.

Electra weeping for the dead Orestes. If we love God while thinking that he does not exist, he will manifest his existence.

Human beings are so made that the ones who do the crushing feel nothing; it is the person crushed who feels what is happening. Unless one has placed oneself on the side of the oppressed, to feel with them, one cannot understand.

The danger is not lest the soul should doubt whether there is any bread, but lest, by a lie, it should persuade itself that it is not hungry.

We must prefer real hell to an imaginary paradise.

There is no detachment where there is no pain. And there is no pain endured without hatred or lying unless detachment is present too.