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.

The great error of nearly all studies of war... has been to consider war as an episode in foreign policies, when it is an act of interior politics.

There is no greater joy for me than looking at the sky on a clear night with an attention so concentrated that all my other thoughts disappear; then one can think that the stars enter into one's soul.

We possess nothing in the world - a mere chance can strip us of everything - except the power to say 'I.

The human soul has need of security and also of risk. The fear of violence or of hunger or of any other extreme evil is a sickness of the soul. The boredom produced by a complete absence of risk is also a sickness of the soul.

Because no other could do it, he himself went to the greatest possible distance, the infinite distance. This infinite distance between God and God, this supreme tearing apart, this incomparable agony, this marvel of love, is the crucifixion. Nothing can be further from God than that which has been made accursed.

In the Church, considered as a social organism, the mysteries inevitably degenerate into beliefs.