If there were no eternal consciousness in a man, if at the bottom of everything there were only a wild ferment, a power that twisting in dark passions produced everything great or inconsequential; if an unfathomable, insatiable emptiness lay hid beneath everything, what would life be but despair?

For he who loves God without faith reflects on himself, while the person who loves God in faith reflects on God.

Let others mock at you, oppose you, when you are under the influence of any passion; do not be in the least offended with those who mock at or oppose you, for they do you good; crucify your self-love and acknowledge the wrong, the error of your heart. But have the deepest pity for those who mock at words and works of faith and piety, of righteousness; for those who oppose the good which you are doing... God preserve you - getting exasperated at them.

The presence of irony does not necessarily mean that the earnestness is excluded. Only assistant professors assume that.

Certainty... lurks at the door of faith and threatens to devour it.

to have faith is precisely to lose one's mind so as to win God.

The deepest form of despair is to choose to be another than himself.