"The destruction of the past is perhaps the greatest of all crimes."

"The contemporary form of true greatness lies in a civilization founded on the spirituality of work."

"Difficult as it is really to listen to someone in affliction, it is just as difficult for him to know that compassion is listening to him."

"In struggling against anguish one never produces serenity; the struggle against anguish only produces new forms of anguish."

"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."

"There can be a true grandeur in any degree of submissiveness, because it springs from loyalty to the laws and to an oath, and not from baseness of soul."

"Who were the fools who spread the story that brute force cannot kill ideas? Nothing is easier. And once they are dead they are no more than corpses."

"A hurtful act is the transference to others of the degradation which we bear in ourselves."

"We are like horses who hurt themselves as soon as they pull on their bits - and we bow our heads. We even lose consciousness of the situation, we just submit. Any re-awakening of thought is then painful."

"Equality is the public recognition, effectively expressed in institutions and manners, of the principle that an equal degree of attention is due to the needs of all human beings."

"As soon as men know that they can kill without fear of punishment or blame, they kill; or at least they encourage killers with approving smiles."

"To be rooted is perhaps the most important and least recognized need of the human soul."

"An atheist may be simply one whose faith and love are concentrated on the impersonal aspects of God."

"Imagination and fiction make up more than three quarters of our real life."

"Real genius is nothing else but the supernatural virtue of humility in the domain of thought."

"A science which does not bring us nearer to God is worthless."

"There is one, and only one, thing in modern society more hideous than crime namely, repressive justice."

"Oppression that is clearly inexorable and invincible does not give rise to revolt but to submission."

"Force is as pitiless to the man who possesses it, or thinks he does, as it is to its victims; the second it crushes, the first it intoxicates. The truth is, nobody really possesses it."

"What a country calls its vital... interests are not things that help its people live, but things that help it make war."

"The mysteries of faith are degraded if they are made into an object of affirmation and negation, when in reality they should be an object of contemplation."

"There is no detachment where there is no pain. And there is no pain endured without hatred or lying unless detachment is present too."

"A test of what is real is that it is hard and rough. Joys are found in it, not pleasure. What is pleasant belongs to dreams."

"Whatever debases the intelligence degrades the entire human being."

"When once a certain class of people has been placed by the temporal and spiritual authorities outside the ranks of those whose life has value, then nothing comes more naturally to men than murder."

"Every time that I think of the crucifixion of Christ, I commit the sin of envy."

"Humanism was not wrong in thinking that truth, beauty, liberty, and equality are of infinite value, but in thinking that man can get them for himself without grace."

"The role of the intelligence - that part of us which affirms and denies and formulates opinions is merely to submit."

"In the Church, considered as a social organism, the mysteries inevitably degenerate into beliefs."

"Beauty always promises, but never gives anything."

"Attachment is the great fabricator of illusions; reality can be attained only by someone who is detached."

"Humility is attentive patience."

"Nothing is less instructive than a machine."

"The only hope of socialism resides in those who have already brought about in themselves, as far as is possible in the society of today, that union between manual and intellectual labor which characterizes the society we are aiming at."

"We must prefer real hell to an imaginary paradise."

"In the intellectual order, the virtue of humility is nothing more nor less than the power of attention."

"Most works of art, like most wines, ought to be consumed in the district of their fabrication."

"I am not a Catholic; but I consider the Christian idea, which has its roots in Greek thought and in the course of the centuries has nourished all of our European civilization, as something that one cannot renounce without becoming degraded."

"It is only the impossible that is possible for God. He has given over the possible to the mechanics of matter and the autonomy of his creatures."

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

"I suffer more from the humiliations inflicted by my country than from those inflicted on her."

"Culture is an instrument wielded by teachers to manufacture teachers, who, in their turn, will manufacture still more teachers."

"One cannot imagine St. Francis of Assisi talking about rights."

"More than in any other performing arts the lack of respect for acting seems to spring from the fact that every layman considers himself a valid critic."

"Charity. To love human beings in so far as they are nothing. That is to love them as God does."

"Two prisoners whose cells adjoin communicate with each other by knocking on the wall. The wall is the thing which separates them but is also their means of communication. It is the same with us and God. Every separation is a link."

"Life does not need to mutilate itself in order to be pure."

"If Germany, thanks to Hitler and his successors, were to enslave the European nations and destroy most of the treasures of their past, future historians would certainly pronounce that she had civilized Europe."

"To set up as a standard of public morality a notion which can neither be defined nor conceived is to open the door to every kind of tyranny."

"Evil being the root of mystery, pain is the root of knowledge."