Evil, when we are in its power, is not felt as evil, but as a necessity, even a duty.
Those who serve a cause are not those who love that cause. They are those who love the life which has to be led in order to serve it - except in the case of the very purest and they are rare.
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.
The most important part of teaching is to teach what it is to know.
Whatever debases the intelligence degrades the entire human being.
The future is made of the same stuff as the present.
Every perfect life is a parable invented by God.
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.
Beauty always promises, but never gives anything.
Attachment is the great fabricator of illusions reality can be attained only by someone who is detached.
There is something in our soul that loathes true attention much more violently than flesh loathes fatigue. That something is much closer to evil than flesh is. That is why, every time we truly give ou...
In the intellectual order, the virtue of humility is nothing more nor less than the power of attention.
Pain is the root of knowledge.
One must always be prepared to switch sides with justice, that fugitive of the winning camp.
Imagination and fiction make up more than three quarters of our real life.
If we go down into ourselves we find that we possess exactly what we desire.
All sins are attempts to fill voids.
To get power over is to defile. To possess is to defile.
Most works of art, like most wines, ought to be consumed in the district of their fabrication.
A hateful act is the transference to others of the degradation we bear in ourselves.