Human relations are like the irregular verbs in a number of languages where nearly all verbs are irregular.

One must not think slightingly of the paradoxical…for the paradox is the source of the thinker’s passion, and the thinker without a paradox is like a lover without feeling: a paltry mediocrity.

As my prayer became more attentive and inward, I had less and less to say. I finally became completely silent... This is how it is. To pray does not mean to listen to oneself speaking. Prayer involves becoming silent, and being silent, and waiting until God is heard.

Knowledge is an attitude, a passion, actually an illicit attitude. For the compulsion to know is like dipsomania, erotomania, and homicidal mania, in producing a character that is out of balance. It is not at all that the scientist goes after the truth.

Far from idleness being the root of all evil, it is rather the only true good.

A man who cannot seduce men cannot save them either.

Intelligence has got the upper hand to such an extent that it transforms the real task into an unreal trick and reality into a play.