Human existence is so fragile a thing and exposed to such dangers that I cannot love without trembling.
The destruction of the past is perhaps the greatest of all crimes.
True definition of science: the study of the beauty of the world.
Those who love a cause are those who love the life which has to be led in order to serve it.
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.
Renunciation is submission to time.
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.
For when two beings who are not friends are near each other there is no meeting, and when friends are far apart there is no separation.
When war is waged, it is for the purpose of safeguarding or increasing one's capacity to make war. International politics are wholly involved in this vicious cycle. What is called national prestige consists in behaving always in such a way as to demoralize other nations by giving them the impression that, if it comes to war, one would certainly defeat them. What is called national security is an imaginary state of affairs in which one would retain the capacity to make war while depriving all other countries of it.
Contradiction is the lever of transcendence.
Justice consists in seeing that no harm is done to men. Whenever a man cries inwardly: 'Why am I being hurt?' harm is being done to him. He is often mistaken when he tries to define the harm, and why and by whom it is being inflicted on him. But the cry itself is infallible.
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.
In this world, only those people who have fallen to the lowest degree of humiliation, far below beggary, who are not just without any social consideration but are regarded by all as being deprived of that foremost human dignity, reason itself - only those people, in fact, are capable of telling the truth. All the others lie.
Truth is sought not because it is truth but because it is good.
The beauty of the world is Christ's tender smile for us coming through matter.
A beautiful woman looking at her image in the mirror may very well believe the image is herself. An ugly woman knows it is not.
Even if our efforts of attention seem for years to be producing no result, one day a light that is in exact proportion to them will flood the soul.
If you say to someone who has ears to hear: "What you are doing to me is not just," you may touch and awaken at its source the spirit of attention and love. But it is not the same with words like, "I have the right..." or "you have no right to..." They evoke a latent war and awaken the spirit of contention.
We are like plants which have the one choice of being in or out of the light.
We only possess what we renounce; what we do not renounce escapes from us.
The essential thing to know about God is that God is Good. All the rest is secondary.
Everybody knows that really intimate conversation is only possible between two or three. As soon as there are six or seven, collective language begins to dominate. That is why it is a complete misinterpretation to apply to the Church the words 'Wheresoever two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.' Christ did not say two hundred, or fifty, or ten. He said two or three.
An atheist may be simply one whose faith and love are concentrated on the impersonal aspects of God.
Sin is not a distance, it is a turning of our gaze in the wrong direction.
The apprehension of necessity is an imitation of creation.
Follow AzQuotes on Facebook, Twitter and Google+. Every day we present the best quotes! Improve yourself, find your inspiration, share with friends
or simply: