“The wish to pray is a prayer in itself.”

“On ne comprends rien à la civilisation moderne, si l'on n'admet pas d'abord qu'elle est une conspiration universelle contre toute espèce de vie intérieure.”

“How easy it is to hate oneself! True grace is to forget. Yet if pride could die in us, the supreme grace would be to love oneself in all simplicity—as one would love any one of those who themselves have suffered and loved in Christ.”

“And now she was thinking of her own death, with her heart gripped not by fear but by the excitement of a great discovery, the feeling that she was about to learn what she had been unable to learn from her brief experience of love. What she thought about death was childish, but what could never have touched her in the past now filled her with poignant tenderness, as sometimes a familiar face we see suddenly with the eyes of love makes us aware that it has been dearer to us than life itself for longer than we have ever realized.”

“Il faut beaucoup de prodigues pour faire un peuple généreux, beaucoup d'indisciplinés pour faire un peuple libre, et beaucoup de jeunes fous pour faire un peuple héroïque”

“There remains the unforseen. And the unforseen is never negligible. ”

“It is one of the most mysterious penalties of men that they should be forced to confide the most precious of their possessions to things so unstable and ever changing, alas, as words.”