Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Oppression that is clearly inexorable and invincible does not give rise to revolt but to submission.
Of two men who have no experience of God, he who denies him is perhaps nearer to him than the other.
When a contradiction is impossible to resolve except by a lie, then we know that it is really a door.
The contemporary form of true greatness lies in a civilization founded upon the spirituality of work.
A work of art has an author and yet, when it is perfect, it has something which is anonymous about it.
Human existence is so fragile a thing and exposed to such dangers that I cannot love without trembling.
There is one, and only one, thing in modern society more hideous than crime namely, repressive justice.
In the intellectual order, the virtue of humility is nothing more nor less than the power of attention.
An imaginary perfection is automatically at the same level as I who imagine it neither higher nor lower.
We possess nothing in the world - a mere chance can strip us of everything - except the power to say 'I.
Stars and blossoming fruit-trees: utter permanence and extreme fragility give an equal sense of eternity.
Attachment is the great fabricator of illusions; reality can be attained only by someone who is detached.
The love of our neighbor in all its fullness simply means being able to say, "What are you going through?
All the tragedies which we can imagine return in the end to the one and only tragedy: the passage of time.
The development of the faculty of attention forms the real object and almost the sole interest of studies.
The demonstrable correlation of opposites is an image of the transcendental correlation of contradictories.
How many people have been thus led, through lack of self-confidence, to stifle their most justified doubts?
I only read what I am hungry for at the moment when I have an appetite for it, and then I do not read, I eat.
It is much easier to imagine ourselves in the place of God the Creator than in the place of Christ crucified.
The intelligent man who is proud of his intelligence is like the condemned man who is proud of his large cell.
Only he who has measured the dominion of force, and knows how not to respect it, is capable of love andjustice.
It is not my business to think about myself. My business is to think about God. It is for God to think about me.
The full expression of personality depends upon its being inflated by social prestige; it is a social privilege.
Those who are unhappy have no need for anything in this world but people capable of giving them their attention.
Education-whether its object be children or adults, individuals or an entire people-consists in creating motives.
We are only geometricians of matter; the Greeks were, first of all, geometricians in the apprenticeship to virtue.
A self-respecting nation is ready for anything, including war, except for a renunciation of its option to make war.
The role of the intelligence - that part of us which affirms and denies and formulates opinions is merely to submit.
To want friendship is a great fault. Friendship ought to be a gratuitous joy, like the joys afforded by art or life.
We should desire neither the immortality nor the death of any human being, whoever he may be, with whom we have to do.
One does not play Bach without having done scales. But neither does one play a scale merely for the sake of the scale.
Nothing can have as its destination anything other than its origin. The contrary idea, the idea of progress, is poison.
What a country calls its vital... interests are not things that help its people live, but things that help it make war.
Meditation on the chance which led to the meeting of my mother and father is even more salutary than meditation on death.
Modern life is given over to immoderation. Immoderation invades everything: actions and thought, public and private life.
One should identify oneself with the universe itself. Everything that is less than the universe is subjected to suffering.
In struggling against anguish one never produces serenity; the struggle against anguish only produces new forms of anguish.
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.
Electra weeping for the dead Orestes. If we love God while thinking that he does not exist, he will manifest his existence.
A test of what is real is that it is hard and rough. Joys are found in it, not pleasure. What is pleasant belongs to dreams.
Religion is a form of nourishment. It is difficult to appreciate the flavor and food-value of something one has never eaten.
Justice, truth, and beauty are sisters and comrades. With three such beautiful words we have no need to look for any others.
The villagers seldom leave the village; many scientists have limited and poorly cultivated minds apart from their specialty.
The virtue of hope is an orientation of the soul towards a transformation after which it will be wholly and exclusively love.
A doctrine serves no purpose in itself, but it is indispensable to have one if only to avoid being deceived by false doctrines.
Culture is an instrument wielded by teachers to manufacture teachers, who, in their turn, will manufacture still more teachers.
A beautiful woman looking at her image in the mirror may very well believe the image is herself. An ugly woman knows it is not.
Grace fills empty spaces, but it can only enter where there is a void to receive it, and it is grace itself which makes this void.
It is impossible that the whole of truth should not be present at every time and every place, available for anyone who desires it.
In what concerns divine things, belief is not appropriate. Only certainty will do. Anything less than certainty is unworthy of God.