Though we chisel away as best we can at the mysterious block from which our life is made, the black vein of destiny continually reappears.

We need those who pray constantly to compensate for those who do not pray at all.

Ever since history has been written, ever since philosophy has meditated, misery has been the garment of the human race.

Thus it is. And we sacrifice ourselves for these visions, which are almost always illusions for the sacrificed, but illusions with which, after all, the whole of human certainty is mingled. We throw ourselves into these tragic affairs and become intoxicated with that which we are about to do. Who knows? We may succeed.

Nothing supplies the place of this instinct. All the nuns in the world are not worth as much as one mother in the formation of a young girl's soul.

My friends, remember this: There are no bad herbs, and no bad men; there are only bad cultivators.

It seemed as though he had for a soul the book of the natural law.