There is one, and only one, thing in modern society more hideous than crime namely, repressive justice.
The poison of skepticism becomes, like alcoholism, tuberculosis, and some other diseases, much more virulent in a hitherto virgin soil.
To be rooted is perhaps the most important and least recognized need of the human soul.
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.
We must prefer real hell to an imaginary paradise.
The most important part of teaching is to teach what it is to know.
With no matter what human being, taken individually, I always find reasons for concluding that sorrow and misfortune do not suit him; either because he seems too mediocre for anything so great, or, on the contrary, too precious to be destroyed.
Oppression that is clearly inexorable and invincible does not give rise to revolt but to submission.
I suffer more from the humiliations inflicted by my country than from those inflicted on her.
The danger is not lest the soul should doubt whether there is any bread, but lest, by a lie, it should persuade itself that it is not hungry.
Culture is an instrument wielded by teachers to manufacture teachers, who, in their turn, will manufacture still more teachers.
Every perfect life is a parable invented by God.
Petroleum is a more likely cause of international conflict than wheat.
To write the lives of the great in separating them from their works necessarily ends by above all stressing their pettiness, because it is in their work that they have put the best of themselves.
Imagination and fiction make up more than three quarters of our real life.
A self-respecting nation is ready for anything, including war, except for a renunciation of its option to make war.
The future is made of the same stuff as the present.
A science which does not bring us nearer to God is worthless.
