Imagination and fiction make up more than three quarters of our real life.

I can, therefore I am.

Whatever debases the intelligence degrades the entire human being.

If Germany, thanks to Hitler and his successors, were to enslave the European nations and destroy most of the treasures of their past, future historians would certainly pronounce that she had civilized Europe.

Two prisoners whose cells adjoin communicate with each other by knocking on the wall. The wall is the thing which separates them but is also their means of communication. It is the same with us and God. Every separation is a link.

It is an eternal obligation toward the human being not to let him suffer from hunger when one has a chance of coming to his assistance.

The most important part of teaching is to teach what it is to know.

Imagination is always the fabric of social life and the dynamic of history. The influence of real needs and compulsions, of real interests and materials, is indirect because the crowd is never conscious of it.

Equality is the public recognition, effectively expressed in institutions and manners, of the principle that an equal degree of attention is due to the needs of all human beings.

To want friendship is a great fault. Friendship ought to be a gratuitous joy, like the joys afforded by art or life.

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

Evil, when we are in its power, is not felt as evil, but as a necessity, even a duty.

The mysteries of faith are degraded if they are made into an object of affirmation and negation, when in reality they should be an object of contemplation.

We can only know one thing about God - that he is what we are not. Our wretchedness alone is an image of this. The more we contemplate it, the more we contemplate him.

A science which does not bring us nearer to God is worthless.

I can, therefore I am.

Most works of art, like most wines, ought to be consumed in the district of their fabrication.

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.

Humility is attentive patience.

Attachment is the great fabricator of illusions; reality can be attained only by someone who is detached.

The role of the intelligence - that part of us which affirms and denies and formulates opinions is merely to submit.

The only way into truth is through one's own annihilation; through dwelling a long time in a state of extreme and total humiliation.

Humanism was not wrong in thinking that truth, beauty, liberty, and equality are of infinite value, but in thinking that man can get them for himself without grace.

It is only the impossible that is possible for God. He has given over the possible to the mechanics of matter and the autonomy of his creatures.

Beauty always promises, but never gives anything.