Justice. To be ever ready to admit that another person is something quite different from what we read when he is there (or when we think about him). Or rather, to read in him that he is certainly something different, perhaps something completely different from what we read in him. Every being cries out silently to be read differently.

Sin is nothing else but the failure to recognize human wretchedness.

To write the lives of the great in separating them from their works necessarily ends by above all stressing their pettiness, because it is in their work that they have put the best of themselves.

Evil being the root of mystery, pain is the root of knowledge.

Beauty is a fruit which we look at without trying to seize it.

Love consents to all and commands only those who consent. Love is abdication. God is abdication.

The world is the closed door. It is a barrier. And at the same time it is the way through.