It is an eternal obligation toward the human being not to let him suffer from hunger when one has a chance of coming to his assistance.

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.

Why is it that reality, when set down untransposed in a book, sounds false?

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.

The payment of debts is necessary for social order. The non-payment is quite equally necessary for social order. For centuries humanity has oscillated, serenely unaware, between these two contradictory necessities.

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.

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.

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

The proper method of philosophy consists in clearly conceiving the insoluble problems in all their insolubility and then in simply contemplating them, fixedly and tirelessly, year after year, without any hope, patiently waiting.

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