The social order, though necessary, is essentially evil, whatever it may be.
When I think of the Crucifixion, I commit the sin of envy.
If there is a real desire, if the thing desired is really light, the desire for light produces it. There is a real desire when there is an effort of attention. It is really light that is desired if all other incentives are absent.
Creative attention means really giving our attention to what does not exist.
Let us love this distance, which is thoroughly woven with friendship, since those who do not love each other are not separated.
There are only two things that pierce the human heart. One is beauty. The other is affliction.
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.
Pain and suffering are a kind of currency passed from hand to hand until they reach someone who receives them but does not pass them on.
We must not wish for the disappearance of our troubles but for the grace to transform them.
The afflicted are not listened to. They are like someone whose tongue has been cut out and who occasionally forgets the fact. When they move their lips no ear perceives any sound. And they themselves soon sink into impotence in the use of language, because of the certainty of not being heard.
In struggling against anguish one never produces serenity; the struggle against anguish only produces new forms of anguish.
There is one, and only one, thing in modern society more hideous than crime namely, repressive justice.
If you want to know what a man is really like, take notice of how he acts when he loses money.
The sea is not less beautiful in our eyes because we know that sometimes ships are wrecked by it.
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.
The intelligent man who is proud of his intelligence is like the condemned man who is proud of his large cell.
Human existence is so fragile a thing and exposed to such dangers that I cannot love without trembling.
Human beings are so made that the ones who do the crushing feel nothing; it is the person crushed who feels what is happening. Unless one has placed oneself on the side of the oppressed, to feel with them, one cannot understand.
The needs of a human being are sacred. Their satisfaction cannot be subordinated either to reasons of state, or to any consideration of money, nationality, race, or color, or to the moral or other value attributed to the human being in question, or to any consideration whatsoever.
Absolutely unmixed attention is prayer.