Nature does at least what she can to translate into visible form the wealth of the creative formula. By the vastness of the abysses into which she penetrates, in the effort – the unsuccessful effort – to house and contain the eternal thought, we may measure the greatness of the divine mind.
I am a spectator, so to speak, of the molecular whirlwind which men call individual life; I am conscious of an incessant metamorphosis, an irresistible movement of existence, which is going on within me – and this phenomenology of myself serves as a window opened upon the mystery of the world.
The germs of all things are in every heart, and the greatest criminals as well as the greatest heroes are but different modes of ourselves.
Our life is nothing, it is true, but our life is divine. A breath of nature annihilates us, but we surpass nature in penetrating far beyond her vast phantasmagoria to the changeless and the eternal.
Joy is the vital air of the soul.
The ideal, after all, is true than the real: for the ideal is the eternal element in perishable things.
The history of man is essentially zoological; it becomes human late in the day, and then only in the beautiful souls, the souls alive to justice, goodness, enthusiasm, and devotion. The angel shows itself rarely and with difficulty through the highly-organized brute.
Before crime is committed conscience must be corrupted, and every bad man who succeeds in reaching a high point of wickedness begins with this.
The art which is grand and yet simple is that which presupposes the greatest elevation both in artist and in public.
Peace is not in itself a dream, but we know it only as the result of a momentary equilibrium – an accident.
The soul may be immortal because she is fitted to rise towards that which is neither born nor dies, towards that which exists substantially, necessarily, invariably, that is to say towards God.
Men of genius supply the substance of history, while the mass of men are but the critical filter, the limiting, slackening, passive force needed for the modification of ideas supplied by genius.
Pay bad people with your goodness; fight their hatred with your kindness. Even if you do not achieve a victory over other people, you will conquer yourself.
The laws of animality govern almost the whole of history.
As it is impossible to be outside God, the best is consciously to dwell in Him.
The tragic solemnity of existence strikes us with terrible force on that morning when we wake to find the mournful words “too late” ringing in our ears.
War is a brutal and fierce means of pacification; it means the suppression of resistance by the destruction or enslavement of the conquered.
The unfinished is nothing.
In order to see Christianity, one must forget all the Christians.
Doubt of the reality of love ends by making us doubt everything.