Contact with the sword causes the same defilement whether it be through the hilt or the point.
For the soldier death is the future, the future his profession assigns him. Yet the idea of man’s having death for a future is abhorrent to nature. Once the experience of war makes visible the possibility of death that lies locked up in each moment, our thoughts cannot travel from one day to the next without meeting death’s face.
A popular Spanish song says in words of marvelous truth: “If anyone wants to make himself invisible, there is no surer way than to become poor.” Love sees what is invisible.
Such is the power of might. Its power to transform an into a thing double and it cuts both ways; it petrifies differently but equally the souls of those who suffer it, and of those who wield it.
Always do what will cost you the most.
There should not be the slightest discrepancy between one’s beliefs and one’s way of life.
Preserve your solitude.
The fact of dying for what is strong robs death of its bitterness – and at the same time of all its value.
If three steps are taken without any other motive than the desire to obey God, those three steps are miraculous; they are equally so whether they take place on dry land or on water.
Physical labour is a daily death.
You could not have wished to be born at a better time than this, when everything is lost.
Toda la publicidad, toda la propaganda, tan variada en sus formas, que busca excitar el deseo de lo superfluo, tanto en el campo como entre los obreros, debe ser considerada un crimen.
It sometimes happens that a thought, either formulated to oneself or not formulated at all, works secretly on the mind and yet has but little direct influence over it.
If the middle classes haven’t the same need of an apocalypse, it is because long rows of figures have a poetry, a prestige which tempers in some sort the boredom associated with money; whereas, when money is counted in sixpences, we have boredom in its pure, unadulterated state. Nevertheless, that taste shown by bourgeois, both great and small, for Fascism, indicates that, in spite of everything, they too can feel bored.
It is not enough to have perceived such a notion, given it one’s attention, understood it; it must be given a permanent place in the mind, so that it may be present even when one’s attention is directed toward something else.
All sins are attempts to fill voids.” because we cannot stand the God-shaped hole inside or us and we try stuffing it full of all sorts of things, but only God may fill it.
God can never be perfectly present to us here below on account of our flesh. But he can be almost perfectly absent from us in extreme affliction. This is the only possibility of perfection for us on earth. That is why the Cross is our only hope.
Yet what is impossible in logic becomes true in life, and the contradiction lodged within the soul tears it to shreds.
I have never caused anyone to weep. I have never spoken with a haughty voice. I have never made anyone afraid. I have never been deaf to words of justice and truth.
On God’s part creation is not an act of self-expansion but of restraint and renunciation.