“The intelligent man who is proud of his intelligence is like the condemned man who is proud of his large cell.”

“The man who has known pure joy, if only for a moment ... is the only man for whom affliction is something devastating. At the same time he is the only man who has not deserved the punishment. But, after all, for him it is no punishment; it is God holding his hand and pressing rather hard. For, if he remains constant, what he will discover buried deep under the sound of his own lamentations is the pearl of the silence of God.”

“You are so proud of your intelligence," said the master. "You are like a like a condemned man, proud of the vastness of his prison cell.”

“Whatever debases the intelligence degrades the entire human being.”

“He who has not God in himself cannot feel His absence.”

“One can never really give a proof of the reality of anything; reality is not something open to proof, it is something established. It is established just because proof is not enough. It is this characteristic of language, at once indispensable and inadequate, which shows the reality of the external world. Most people hardly ever realize this, because it is rare that the very same man thinks and puts his thought into action.”

“If the error is thrust deeply enough into the soul, man cannot but succumb to it.”