Quote collection
374 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"Beauty captivates the flesh in order to obtain permission to pass right through to the soul. . . . When the feeling for beauty happens to be associated with the sight of some human being, the transference of love is made possible, at any rate in an illusory manner. But it is all the beauty of the world, it is universal beauty, for which we yearn."
"To die for God is not a proof of faith in God. To die for an unknown and repulsive convict who is a victim of injustice, that is a proof of faith in God."
"Every sin is an attempt to fly from emptiness."
"Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring. Imaginary good is boring; real good is always new, marvelous, intoxicating."
"I suffer more from the humiliations inflicted by my country than from those inflicted on her."
"Absolutely unmixed attention is prayer."
"We do injury to a child if we bring it up in a narrow Christianity, which prevents it from ever becoming capable of perceiving that there are treasures of purest gold to be found in non-Christian civilizations. Laical education does an even greater injury to children. It covers up those treasures, and those of Christianity as well."
"Love is not consolation, it is light."
"Just as a person who is always asserting that he is too good-natured is the very one from whom to expect, on some occasion, the coldest and most unconcerned cruelty, so when any group sees itself as the bearer of civilization this very belief will betray it into behaving barbarously at the first opportunity."
"In struggling against anguish one never produces serenity; the struggle against anguish only produces new forms of anguish."
"The beauty of the world is Christ's tender smile for us coming through matter."
"Difficult as it is really to listen to someone in affliction, it is just as difficult for him to know that compassion is listening to him."
"What is surprising is not that oppression should make its appearance only after higher forms of economy have been reached, but that it should always accompany them."
"To be a hero or a heroine, one must give an order to oneself."
"Justice. To be ever ready to admit that another person is something quite different from what we read when he is there (or when we think about him). Or rather, to read in him that he is certainly something different, perhaps something completely different from what we read in him. Every being cries out silently to be read differently."
"The joy of learning is as indispensable in study as breathing is in running. Where it is lacking there are no real students, but only poor caricatures of apprentices who, at the end of their apprenticeship, will not even have a trade."
"At the centre of the human heart is the longing for an absolute good, a longing which is always there and is never appeased by any object in this world."
"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."
"When once a certain class of people has been placed by the temporal and spiritual authorities outside the ranks of those whose life has value, then nothing comes more naturally to men than murder."
"Fortunately the sky is beautiful everywhere."