Catholics from France

"...you shall never hold the Kingdom of France from God, the King of Heaven, the son of St. Mary; but King Charles, the true heir, will hold it; for God, the King of Heaven wishes it so...."

"You ruin the sacraments of the Church, you rend the articles of Faith, you destroy churches... What rage or madness drives you? This Faith, which Almighty God, which the Son, which the Holy Spirit have revealed, established, given sway and glorified a thousandfold through miracles is the faith which you persecute.... if I do not hear that you have corrected yourselves, I may well leave these English and set off against you, so that, by the sword if I cannot otherwise, I may remove your madness and foul superstition... if you choose instead to return to the Catholic faith and to the original source of light, send me your ambassadors and I shall tell them what you must do."

"Children say that people are hanged sometimes for speaking the truth."

"About Jesus Christ and the Church, I simply know they're just one thing, and we shouldn't complicate the matter."

"Alas! that my body, clean and whole, never been corrupted, today must be consumed and burnt to ashes!"

"I do not fear men-at-arms; my way has been made plain before me. If there be men-at-arms my Lord God will make a way for me to go to my Lord Dauphin. For that am I come."

"I know this now. Every man gives his life to what he believes. Every woman gives her life for what she believes. Sometimes people believe in little or nothing, and so they give their lives to little or nothing…"

"If ever I do escape, no one shall reproach me with having broken or violated my faith, not having given my word to any one, whosoever it may be."

"It is true I wished to escape; and so I wish still; is not this lawful for all prisoners?"

"I was thirteen when I had a Voice from God for my help and guidance. The first time that I heard this Voice, I was very much frightened; it was mid-day, in the summer, in my father's garden. I had not fasted the day before. I heard this Voice to my right, towards the Church; rarely do I hear it without its being accompanied also by a light. This light comes from the same side as the Voice. Generally it is a great light. Since I came into France I have often heard this Voice. … If I were in a wood, I could easily hear the Voice which came to me. It seemed to me to come from lips I should reverence. I believe it was sent me from God. When I heard it for the third time, I recognized that it was the Voice of an Angel. This Voice has always guarded me well, and I have always understood it; it instructed me to be good and to go often to Church; it told me it was necessary for me to come into France. You ask me under what form this Voice appeared to me? You will hear no more of it from me this time. It said to me two or three times a week: 'You must go into France.' My father knew nothing of my going. The Voice said to me: 'Go into France !' I could stay no longer. It said to me: 'Go, raise the siege which is being made before the City of Orleans. Go !' it added, 'to Robert de Baudricourt, Captain of Vaucouleurs: he will furnish you with an escort to accompany you.' And I replied that I was but a poor girl, who knew nothing of riding or fighting. I went to my uncle and said that I wished to stay near him for a time. I remained there eight days. I said to him, 'I must go to Vaucouleurs.' He took me there. When I arrived, I recognized Robert de Baudricourt, although I had never seen him. I knew him, thanks to my Voice, which made me recognize him."

"The Voice had promised me that, as soon I came to the King, he would receive me. Those of my party knew well that the Voice had been sent me from God; they have seen and known this Voice, I am sure of it. My King and many others have also heard and seen the Voices which came to me: there were there Charles de Bourbon and two or three others. There is not a day when I do not hear this Voice; and I have much need of it. But never have I asked of it any recompense but the salvation of my soul."

"The light comes at the same time as the Voice. … I will not tell you all; I have not leave; my oath does not touch on that. My Voice is good and to be honored. I am not bound to answer you about it. I request that the points on which I do not now answer may be given me in writing. … You shall not know yet. There is a saying among children, that 'Sometimes one is hanged for speaking the truth.'" [She is asked : Do you know if you are in the grace of God?] If I am not, may God place me there; if I am, may God so keep me. I should be the saddest in all the world if I knew that I were not in the grace of God. But if I were in a state of sin, do you think the Voice would come to me? I would that every one could hear the Voice as I hear it."

"Of the love or hatred God has for the English, I know nothing, but I do know that they will all be thrown out of France, except those who die there."

"You say that you are my judge. I do not know if you are! But I tell you that you must take good care not to judge me wrongly, because you will put yourself in great danger. I warn you, so that if God punishes you for it, I would have done my duty by telling you!"

"One life is all we have, and we live it as we believe in living it, and then it's gone. But to surrender what you are, and live without belief - that's more terrible than dying - more terrible than dying young."

"Joan of Arc fought for her country, she was successful, but she was too strong, too uppity, and no woman could do those things on her own really, so she must have been in league with Dark Forces. Burn her at the stake!, which they did."

"We declare that you are fallen again into your former errors and under the sentence of excommunication which you originally incurred we decree that you are a relapsed heretic; and by this sentence which we deliver in writing and pronounce from this tribunal, we denounce you as a rotten member, which, so that you shall not infect the other members of Christ, must be cast out of the unity of the Church, cut off from her body, and given over to the secular power: we cast you off, separate and abandon you, praying this same secular power on this side of death and the mutilation of your limbs, to moderate its judgment towards you, and if true signs of repentance appear in you to permit the sacrament of penance to be administered to you."

"God forgive us: we have burned a saint."

"Joan of Arc, dreaming under her trees, heard the messages of the saints. The voices told her what to do: "Deliver Orléans and consecrate the Dauphin at Rheims." This idea would probably never have occurred to the wisest of the politicians living in her day, or if it had, they would have rejected it as impossible. This was the mission of Joan of Arc and she fulfilled it. It was the salvation of France. By common consent, in no country and in no time has there been a purer heroine or a more wonderful story."

"From the most matter-of-fact point of view, that of politics, what is most astonishing about this Maid of Orléans is her comprehension of the situation, her good sense, and the correctness of her judgment. She understood that the fate of France was one with that of her kings and that it was necessary to revive the royal power."

"Not infrequently even the soldiers and politicians who were fondest of Joan did not wish to listen to her. Nearly always she was right, her presentiments were verified, and she gave forth such a spirit of quiet certainty that people did without effort what she told them."

"[O]ne of the great ideas of her whom Villon calls "the good lass of Lorraine" had been the reconciliation of the French people. Thanks to the national movement which her intervention set on foot, the widespread horror at her martyrdom brought her wish to fulfillment. The domination of England was more and more detested."

"If I were Joan of Arc I would become governor of Puerto Rico and make my island a state — and then become president of the United States of Banana — and head south to conquer all of Latin America and the Caribbean — and swoop back north to take over Canada. I could do all that — if only I could decide between three options: Wishy, Wishy-Washy, and Washy."

"Joanni, Joanni wears a golden cross And she looks so beautiful in her armour Joanni, Joanni blows a kiss to God And she never wears a ring on her finger..."

"My Joan is that of a boy who loved parish cinemas and those in the suburbs – the only ones he could afford – between the 1940s and 1950s. For this reason, she will forever have the face of Ingrid Bergman, discovered shortly after 1952 in Fleming's Technicolour blockbuster – admired, moreover, in a cut-up third version – and then seen again, in a completely different interpretation and with a very different intensity, in Roberto Rossellini's 1954 film, which, through the text of Paul Claudel, reinterpreted the allegories of medieval sacred representations. (p. 4"

"The tide turned and the war began to go against the English. This was due in great part to the influence of a young French peasant girl, Joan of Arc. Inspired by the belief that she had been given a mission by God to deliver France from its invaders and to place the Dauphin on the throne of his fathers, she appeared before him, secured his reluctant consent to allow her to lead some troops, inspired them with her own enthusiasm and confidence, and won a great success by driving away the English who were besieging Orleans. The Dauphin himself was then stirred to greater activity and under the persuasion of the Maid of Orleans, as she came to be called, made his way to Rheims, the ancient coronation city of the French kings, and was there crowned king of France. Joan now felt that she had fulfilled her mission and asked to be allowed to return to her home, but the Dauphin insisted that she should remain with the army. Some time after this she was captured by the English. After a trial which was planned to end in but one way she was burned as a witch in the market place of Rouen. Even one of the persecutors of the innocent French patriot girl wavered and turned away, crying, "God have mercy upon us, we have burned a saint." The movement of success which Joan had begun continued, and although the French frequently wasted their opportunities, yet on the whole the reconquest of their native land went steadily on. The English were driven out of one province after another; their expeditions from England were more poorly equipped and more unsuccessful. Finally the long war came to a close in 1453 by the defeat of an English army near Bordeaux, and the loss of all their territory in France except Calais."

"Joan was a being so uplifted from the ordinary run of mankind that she finds no equal in a thousand years. She embodied the natural goodness and valour of the human race in unexampled perfection. Unconquerable courage, infinite compassion, the virtue of the simple, the wisdom of the just, shone forth in her. She glorifies as she freed the soil from which she sprang."

"Yes, it’s true. It’s true that Joan of Arc was my dream as a little girl. I discovered her toward the age of ten or twelve, when I went to France. I don’t remember where I read about her, but I recall that she immediately took on a definite importance for me. I wanted to sacrifice my life for my country. It seems like foolishness and yet ... what happens when we’re children is engraved forever in our lives."

"Who in the moment of victory remains inaccessible to vanity and hate, who in the midst of popular enthusiasm lives in humility and prayer, who in the universal crush of ambition covets neither profit nor honours."

"Joan of Arc was perhaps the most wonderful person who ever lived in the world. The story of her life is so strange that we could scarcely believe it to be true, if all that happened to her had not been told by people in a court of law, and written down by her deadly enemies, while she was still alive."

"They burned her cruelly to death in the marketplace of Rouen, with eight hundred soldiers round the stake, lest any should attempt to save her. They had put a false accusation on a paper cap, and set it on her head : it was written that she was "Heretic, Relapsed, Apostate, Idolatress." This was her reward for the bravest and best life that was ever lived."

"And now I know how Joan of Arc felt Now I know how Joan of Arc felt As the flames rose to her And her started to melt"

"Official orators have agreed amongst themselves to leave out one essential point: that to undertake the liberation of the fatherland, Joan had to go directly to the Dauphin Charles, acknowledge the right of his royal blood, and have him crowned and acclaimed on the cathedral square of Reims."

"The courage of Joan of Arc was made the subject of a popular lecture not long ago by one of our intelligent citizens."

"I have always responded to challenges, followed apocalyptical personalities, apostles, Rasputins, Joan of Arcs who hear voices that come from Heaven, illuminated guides of humanity, holders of truth, priests."

"Jehanne... If you come from God, I do not fear you … if you come from the Devil, I fear you even less."

"I saw myself in front of an angry mob, facing a firing squad, weeping incomprehensible sorrows and forgiving them! — Like Joan of Arc!"

"If Joan had been malicious, selfish, cowardly, or stupid, she would have been one of the most odious persons known to history instead of one of the most attractive."

"Must then a Christ perish in torment in every age to save those that have no imagination?"

"She is easily and by far the most extraordinary person the human race has ever produced."

"Whatever thing men call great, look for it in Joan of Arc, and there you will find it."

"No doubt you know that Galileo had been convicted not long ago by the Inquisition, and that his opinion on the movement of the Earth had been condemned as heresy. Now I will tell you that all things I explain in my treatise, among which is also that same opinion about the movement of the Earth, all depend on one another, and are based upon certain evident truths. Nevertheless, I will not for the world stand up against the authority of the Church. ...I have the desire to live in peace and to continue on the road on which I have started."

"What I have given in the second book on the nature and properties of curved lines, and the method of examining them, is, it seems to me, as far beyond the treatment in the ordinary geometry, as the rhetoric of Cicero is beyond the a, b, c of children."

"M. Desargues puts me under obligations on account of the pains that it has pleased him to have in me, in that he shows that he is sorry that I do not wish to study more in geometry, but I have resolved to quit only abstract geometry, that is to say, the consideration of questions which serve only to exercise the mind, and this, in order to study another kind of geometry, which has for its object the explanation of the phenomena of nature... You know that all my physics is nothing else than geometry."

"Mr. Clerselier has written me that you are expecting from him my Meditations... in order to present them to the queen of the land. ...If I had only been as wise as they say the savages persuaded themselves that the monkeys were, I never would have become known as a maker of books: Since it is said that they imagined that the monkeys could indeed speak, if they wanted to, but that they chose not to so lest they be forced to work. And since I had not the same prudence to abstain from writing, I now have neither as much liesure nor as much peace as I would have had if I had kept quiet. But since the mistake has already been made, and since I am now known by an infinity of people at the academy, who look askance at my writings and scour them for means of harming me, I do have great hope of being known to persons of great merit, whose power and virtue could protect me."

"Me tenant comme je suis, un pied dans un pays et l'autre en un autre, je trouve ma condition très heureuse, en ce qu'elle est libre."

"So blind is the curiosity by which mortals are possessed, that they often conduct their minds along unexplored routes, having no reason to hope for success, but merely being willing to risk the experiment of finding whether the truth they seek lies there."

"The entire method consists in the order and arrangement of the things to which the mind's eye must turn so that we can discover some truth."

"No more useful inquiry can be proposed than that which seeks to determine the nature and the scope of human knowledge. ... This investigation should be undertaken once at least in his life by anyone who has the slightest regard for truth, since in pursuing it the true instruments of knowledge and the whole method of inquiry come to light. But nothing seems to me more futile than the conduct of those who boldly dispute about the secrets of nature ... without yet having ever asked even whether human reason is adequate to the solution of these problems."

"Mais apud me omnia fiunt Mathematicè in Natura"

"Le bon sens est la chose du monde la mieux partagée : car chacun pense en être si bien pourvu, que ceux même qui sont les plus difficiles à contenter en toute autre chose, n'ont point coutume d'en désirer plus qu'ils en ont."

"Je pense, donc je suis."

"Thus, all unknown quantities can be expressed in terms of a single quantity, whenever the problem can be constructed by means of circles and straight lines, or by conic sections, or even by some other curve of degree not greater than the third or fourth. But I shall not stop to explain this in more detail, because I should deprive you of the pleasure of mastering it yourself, as well as of the advantage of training your mind by working over it, which is in my opinion the principal benefit to be derived from this science. Because, I find nothing here so difficult that it cannot be worked out by anyone at all familiar with ordinary geometry and with algebra, who will consider carefully all that is set forth in this treatise."

"I could give here several other ways of tracing and conceiving a series of curved lines, each curve more complex than any preceding one, but I think the best way to group together all such curves and them classify them in order, is by recognizing the fact that all points of those curves which we may call "geometric," that is, those which admit of precise and exact measurement, must bear a definite relation to all points of a straight line, and that this relation must be expressed by a single equation. If this equation contains no term of higher degree than the rectangle of two unknown quantities, or the square of one, the curve belongs to the first and simplest class, which contains only the circle, the parabola, the hyperbola, and the ellipse; but when the equation contains one or more terms of the third or fourth degree in one or both of the two unknown quantities (for it requires two unknown quantities to express the relation between two points) the curve belongs to the second class; and if the equation contains a term of the fifth or sixth degree in either or both of the unknown quantities the curve belongs to the third class, and so on indefinitely."

"In order to seek truth, it is necessary once in the course of our life, to doubt, as far as possible, of all things."

"I suppose the body to be nothing but a statue or machine made of earth, which God forms with the explicit intention of making it as much as possible like us."

"I should like you to consider that these functions (including passion, memory, and imagination) follow from the mere arrangement of the machine’s organs every bit as naturally as the movements of a clock or other automaton follow from the arrangement of its counter-weights and wheels."

"Analytical geometry was invented by Descartes and the first exposition of it was given in 1637: that exposition was both difficult and obscure, and to most of his contemporaries, to whom the method was new, it must have been incomprehensible. Wallis made the method intelligible to all mathematicians."

"René Descartes is more widely known as a philosopher than as a mathematician, although his philosophy has been controverted while his mathematics has not. ...In accordance with the ideals of his age, when experimental science was first seriously challenging arrogant speculation, Descartes set a greater store by his philosophy than his mathematics. But he fully appreciated the power of his new method in geometry."

"The implications of Descartes' analytic reformulation of geometry are obvious. Not only did the new method make possible a systematic investigation of known curves, but, what is of infinitely greater significance, it potentially created a whole universe of geometric forms beyond conception by the synthetic method. Descartes also saw that his method applies equally as well to surfaces... but he did not develop this. With the extension to surfaces, there was no reason why geometry should stop with equations in three variables; and the generalization to systems of equations in any finite number of variables was readily made in the nineteenth century. Finally, in the twentieth century, the farthest extension possible in this direction led to spaces of a non-denumerable infinity of dimensions. ...The path from Descartes to the creators of higher space is straight and clear; the remarkable thing is that it was not traveled earlier than it was."

"Descartes devised the notation x, x2, x3, x4,... for powers, and made the final break with the Greek tradition of admitting only the first, second, and third powers ('lengths,' 'areas,' and 'volumes') in geometry. After Descartes, geometers freely used powers higher than the third without a qualm, recognizing that representability as figures in Euclidean space for all of the terms in an equation is irrelevant to the geometrical interpretation of the analysis. The principle of undetermined coefficients was also stated by Descartes. A second outstanding addition to algebra was the famous rule of signs... the first universally applicable criterion for the nature of the roots of an algebraic equation. ...it admirably represents Descartes' flair for generality which made him the mathematician that he was."

"CARTESIAN, adj. Relating to Descartes, a famous philosopher, author of the celebrated dictum, Cogito ergo sum -- whereby he was pleased to suppose he demonstrated the reality of human existence. The dictum might be improved, however, thus: Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum -- "I think that I think, therefore I think that I am;" as close an approach to certainty as any philosopher has yet made."

"Descartes maintained his confidence in the instantaneity of light. ...Yet in his derivation of the law of refraction, Descartes reasoned that light traveled faster in a dense medium than in one less dense. He seems to have had no qualms about comparing infinite magnitudes!"

"Descartes was liable to be misled by too easy an acceptance of data that had been handed down by scholastic writers. ...two grand Aristotelian principles helped to condition the form of the universe as he reconstructed it—first, the view that a vacuum is impossible, and secondly, the view that objects could only influence one another if they actually touched—there could be no such thing as attraction, no such thing as . ...Descartes insisted that every fraction of space should be fully occupied all the time by continuous matter... infinitely divisible. The particles were... packed so tightly that one of them could not move without communicating the commotion to the rest. The matter formed whirlpools in the skies, and it was because the planets were caught each in its own whirlpool that they were carried around... all similarly caught in a larger whirlpool, which had the sun as its centre... Gravity itself was the result of these whirlpools of invisible matter which had the effect of sucking things down towards their centre. ...In the time of Newton the system of Descartes and the theory of vortices or whirlpools proved to be vulnerable to both mathematical and experimental attack."

"[B]elievers in the plenum... the Cartesian idea of a space entirely filled with matter—contributed... to what was to become the Newtonian synthesis. Descartes himself achieved the modern formulation of the law of ... working it out by a natural deduction from his theory of the conservation of momentum, his theory that the amount of motion in the universe always remains the same. It was he rather than Galileo who fully grasped this principle of inertia and formulated it in all its clarity. ...The modern doctrine of had been put forward by Descartes and was quickly gaining acceptance, though people like Borelli... still seemed to think that they had to provide a force actually pushing the planets along..."

"The great invention... Descartes gave to the world, the analytical diagram, ...gives at a glance a graphical picture of the law governing a phenomenon, or of the correlation which exists between dependent events, or of the changes which a situation undergoes in the course of time. ...the invention of Descartes not only created the important discipline of analytic geometry, but it gave Newton, Leibnitz, Euler, and the Bernoullis that weapon for the lack of which Archimedes and later Fermat had to leave inarticulate their profound and far-reaching thoughts."

"Descartes implicitly assumed a complete correspondence existed between the real numbers and the points of a fixed axis. ...tacitly, because it seemed so natural as to go without saying, he accepted it as axiomatic that between the points of a plane and the aggregate of all pairs of real numbers there can be established a perfect correspondence. Thus the Dedekind-Cantor axiom, extended to two dimensions, was tacitly incorporated in a discipline which was created two hundred years before Dedekind and Cantor saw the day. This discipline became the [tool and] proving-grounds for all achievements of the following two centuries: the calculus, the theory of functions, mechanics, and physics. Nowhere did this discipline, analytic geometry, strike any contradictions; and such was its power to suggest new problems and forecast the results that wherever applied it would soon become the indispensable tool of investigation."

"The famous problems of antiquity doubling the cube, angle trisection, and squaring the circle]... were now disposed of by Descartes in a matter-of-fact statement that any problem which leads to an equation of the first degree is capable of a geometric solution by straight-edge only; that a straight-edge [and] compass construction is equivalent to the solution of a quadratic equation; but that if a problem leads to an irreducible equation of degree higher than the second, its geometrical solution is not possible by means of a ruler and compass only."

"René Descartes played his part in the world as a man in a mask. The phrase is his own. It implied no conscious duplicity but a certain apartness rendering him incapable of taking his share unreservedly in the game of life. His attitude was that of an unimpassioned spectator. He looked on and learned while others struggled for the stakes. A born recluse, he remained solitary even in the throng of social intercourse. ...The transport felt by Bacon at the glorious vision of a future in which the harvest he had sown would be reaped was not shared by Descartes. He indeed held himself to be the sower and the reaper in one. Calmly, and with settled conviction, he claimed to have virtually expounded all the phenomena of nature. He had crossed the frontier of the new world of knowledge; those who desired to follow him needed only to purge their eyes with the euphrasy of methodic doubt in order to obtain those crystal-clear intuitions from which, by sure reasoning, universal science could be deduced. ...He was a mathematician of first rate originality and power. ...Unfortunately, however, he was misled by false analogies of thought; he sought to universalise what was by its nature special and restricted; and thus pursued the flitting vision of a deceptive unity in knowledge. As the upshot, he gave to his philosophy a pseudo-mathematical character, and sacrificed the solid achievement of much by aiming at the illusory certainty of everything."

"This momentous finding of nonlocality has, in common with that of Einstein concerning time, the additional feature that it disproves the validity, not of a "view of the World", but of a deeply ingrained concept. And this brings me to the second reason. It is that this disproof of a deeply ingrained concept pointed in fact in a direction quite consonant with my own line of thought. In a way, it brings us back to Descartes, for, as we all know, Descartes was the first scientist who dared to question our common views, including even all the notions that had always seemed so primitive and obvious that thinkers, scientists and so on never hesitated in making use of them. He found out that, at the start, he could doubt of everything but his own thinking, and in this, according to Hegel, he was a hero. Unfortunately he then constructed a grand metaphysical argument that led him to the view that, after all, since God is not a liar, the "obvious" realistic concepts must apply. He thereby founded mechanicism, which is the theory that, apart from thought, everything has to be described by the exclusive means of familiar concepts. We know, of course, how deficient such a view is. But I think Descartes' really significant contribution on these matters is not mechanicism. It is what I just said. In other words, it is the realization that a sharp distinction has to be made between rationality on the one hand and the use of seemingly obvious concepts on the other hand. And that therefore, if you are a rational person you cannot demand that science should be based exclusively on seemingly obvious concepts without first logically justifying this demand. This Descartes tried to do but, since his argument based on God not being a liar is now considered as not convincing enough, we are not bound to his conclusion. Indeed, I consider that we are not even bound to the idea that physics should be expressed in an ontological language, which was more or less Einstein's view. The older Einstein seems to have considered that Reality, and even physical objects in the plural, can be described as they really are, if not by familiar concepts, at least by unfamiliar ones, such as those borrowed from mathematics. I do not think this is necessarily true. I consider that mere predictive rules, such as the Born rule in quantum mechanics, count as fully fledged explanations, or, more precisely, as constituting, when all taken together, a first step in an explanation, the second step being the philosophical idea that these predictive rules dimly reflect some existing, largely hidden structures of Mind-Independent Reality. Of course, these speculations of mine go much further than nonlocality. But you understand that they receive some support from it."

"To say that madness is dazzlement is to say that the madman sees the day, the same day that rational men see, as both live in the same light, but that when looking at that very light, nothing else and nothing in it, he sees it as nothing but emptiness, night and nothingness. Darkness for him is another way of seeing the day. Which means that in looking at the night and the nothingness of the night, he does not see at all. And that in the belief that he sees, he allows the fantasies of his imagination and the people of his nights to come to him as realities. For that reason, delirium and dazzlement exist in a relation that is the essence of madness, just as truth and clarity, in their fundamental relation, are constitutive of classical reason. In that sense, the Cartesian progression of doubt is clearly the great exorcism of madness. Descartes closes his eyes and ears the better to see the true light of the essential day, thereby ensuring that he will not suffer the dazzlement of the mad, who open their eyes and only see night, and not seeing at all, believe that they see things when they imagine them. In the uniform clarity of his closed senses, Descartes has broken with all possible fascination, and if he sees, he knows he really sees what he is seeing. Whereas in the madman's gaze, drunk on the light that is night, images rise up and multiply, beyond any possible self-criticism, since the madman sees them, but irremediably separated from being, since the madman sees nothing. Unreason is to reason as dazzlement is to daylight."

"Descartes, I think, broke with this when he said, "To accede to truth, it suffices that I be any subject that can see what is evident." Evidence is substituted for ascesis at the point where the relationship to the self intersects the relationship to others and the world. The relationship to the self no longer needs to be ascetic to get into relation to the truth. It suffices that the relationship to the self reveals to me the obvious truth of what I see for me to apprehend the truth definitively. Thus, I can be immoral and know the truth. I believe this is an idea that, more or less explicitly, was rejected by all previous culture. Before Descartes, one could not be impure, immoral, and know the truth. With Descartes, direct evidence is enough. After Descartes, we have a nonascetic subject of knowledge. This change makes possible the institutionalization of modern science."

"Newton's proof of the law of refraction is based on an erroneous notion that light travels faster in glass than in air, the same error that Descartes had made. This error stems from the fact that both of them thought that light was corpuscular in nature."

"The Geometry is divided into three books. In the first book Descartes briefly explains his method. He says that every geometric problem may be reduced to a problem of straight lines; and he points out that, in order to find these lines, nothing more advanced is required than the five fundamental operations of Arithmetic, viz.: Addition, Subtraction, Multiplication, Division, and Root Extraction. He advises:— (1) That the problem should be imagined as done. (2) That then lines, whether known or unknown, which appear necessary in its solution, should be named. (3) And finally, that their relation to each other should be sought, and expressed by means of an equation or equations. Descartes strongly advocates this analytic treatment of Geometry as giving greater clearness and more continuity of argument, qualities lacking in the work of the Ancients, who probably did not understand where such reasoning would carry them, and whose isolated proofs were necessarily wanting in connection and generality."

"It should be remembered that it was Descartes who systematised our Mathematical notation. He used the letters at the end of the alphabet as variables, and those at the beginning as constants, and he brought into general use our present system of indices. He also introduced the method of indeterminate co-efficients for the solution of equations."

"There seems to me to exist a sort of rationalism which, by not recognizing these limits of the powers of individual reason, in fact tends to make human reason a less effective instrument than it could be. ... This sort of rationalism is a comparatively new phenomenon, though its roots go back to ancient Greek philosophy. Its modern influence, however, begins only in the sixteenth and seventeenth century and particularly with the formulation of its main tenets by the French philosopher, René Descartes."

"[I]n the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum theory we can indeed proceed without mentioning ourselves as individuals, but we cannot disregard the fact that natural science is formed by men. Natural science does not simply describe and explain nature; it is part of the interplay between nature and ourselves; it describes nature as exposed to our nature of questioning. This was a possibility of which Descartes could not have thought, but it makes a sharp separation between the world and the I impossible. If one follows the great difficulty which even eminent scientists like Einstein had in understanding and accepting the Copenhagen interpretation... one can trace the roots... to the Cartesian partition....it will take a long time for it [this partition] to be replaced by a really different attitude toward the problem of reality."

"Descartes was an eminent mathematician, and it would seem that the bent of his mind led him to overestimate the value of deductive reasoning from general principles, as much as Bacon had underestimated it."

"There is no doubt of the enormous influence Descartes has exercised from his own day to ours. But his relation to modern philosophy is not that of father to son, nor of architect to palace, nor of planner to city. Rather, in the history of philosophy his position is like that of the waist of an hourglass. As the sand in the upper chamber of such a glass reaches its lower chamber only through the slender passage between the two, so too ideas that had their origin in the Middle Ages have reached the modern world through a narrow filter: the compressing genius of Descartes."

"Aristotle remarks in his Poetics that poetry is superior to history, because history presents only what has occurred, poetry what could and ought to have occurred, poetry has possibility at its disposal. Possibility, poetic and intellectual, is superior to actuality; the esthetic and the intellectual are disinterested. But there is only one interest, the interest in existing; disinterestedness is the expression for indifference to actuality. The indifference is forgotten in the Cartesian Cogito-ergo sum, which disturbs the disinterestedness of the intellectual and offends speculative thought, as if something else should follow from it. I think, ergo I think; whether I am or it is (in the sense of actuality, where I means a single existing human being and it means a single definite something) is infinitely unimportant. That what I am thinking is in the sense of thinking does not, of course, need any demonstration, nor does it need to be demonstrated by any conclusion, since it is indeed demonstrated. But as soon as I begin to want to make my thinking teleological in relation to something else, interest enters the game. As soon as it is there, the ethical is present and exempts me from further trouble with demonstrating my existence, and since it obliges me to exist, it prevents me from making an ethically deceptive and metaphysically unclear flourish of a conclusion."

"Thus was the Nixon Administration first exposed to the maddening diplomatic style of the North Vietnamese. It would have been impossible to find two societies less intended by fate to understand each other than the Vietnamese and the American. On the one side, Vietnamese history and Communist ideology combined to produce almost morbid suspicion and ferocious self-righteousness. This was compounded by a legacy of Cartesian logic from French colonialism that produced an infuriatingly doctrinaire technique of advocacy."

"The essential difference between Descartes and Vieta is not in the least that Descartes unites "arithmetic" and "geometry" into a single science while Vieta retains their separation. ...both have in mind a universal science: Descartes' "mathesis universalis" corresponds completely to Vieta's "zetetic," by means of which is realized, with the aid of "logistica speciosa," the "new" and "pure" algebra, interpreted as a general "analytic art." But whereas Vieta sees the most important part of analytic in "rhetoric" or "exegetic" in which the numerical computations and the geometric constructions indeed represent two different possibilities of application (so that the traditional conception of geometry is preserved), Descartes begins by understanding geometric "figures" as structures whose "being" is determined solely by their symbolic character. The truth is that Descartes does not, as is often thoughtlessly said, identify "arithmetic" and "geometry"—rather he identifies "algebra" understood as symbolic logistic with geometry interpreted by him for the first time as a symbolic science."

"As a symbol of the power of absolutism, Versailles has no equal. It also expresses, in the most monumental terms of its age, the rationalistic creed—based on scientific advances, such as the physics of Sir Isaac Newton (1642–1727) and the mathematical philosophy of René Descartes (1596–1650)—that all knowledge must be systematic and all science must be the consequence of the intellect imposed on matter. The whole spectacular design of Versailles proudly proclaims the mastery of human intelligence (and the mastery of Louis XIV) over the disorderliness of nature."

"Descartes ... complained that Greek geometry was so much tied to figures "that is can exercise the understanding only on condition of greatly fatiguing the imagination." Descartes also deplored that the methods of Euclidean geometry were exceedingly diverse and specialized and did not allow for general applicability. Each theorem required a new kind of proof... What impressed Descartes especially was that algebra enables man to reason efficiently. It mechanizes thought, and hence produces almost automatically results that may otherwise be difficult to establish. ...historically it was Descartes who clearly perceived and called attention to this feature. Whereas geometry contained the truth about the universe, algebra offered the science of method. It is ... paradoxical that great thinkers should be enamored with ideas that mechanize thought. Of course, their goal is to get at more difficult problems, as indeed they do."

"René Descartes famously argued that a dog howling pitifully when hit by a carriage does not feel pain. The dog is simply a broken machine, devoid of the res cogitans or cognitive substance that is the hallmark of people. For those who argue that Descartes didn't truly believe that dogs and other animals had no feelings, I present the fact that he, like other natural philosophers of his age, performed vivisection on rabbits and dogs. That's live coronary surgery without anything to dull the agonizing pain. As much as I admire Descartes as a revolutionary thinker, I find this difficult to stomach."

"Descartes writes in a letter to Plempius in 1638 (page 81 of vol. 3 of his Philosophical Writings, ed. and trans. by Cottingham et al. [Cambridge University Press]): "For this is disproved by an utterly decisive experiment, which I was interested to observe several times before, and which I performed today in the course of writing this letter. First, I opened the chest of a live rabbit and removed the ribs to expose the heart and the trunk of the aorta. I then tied the aorta with a thread a good distance from the heart.""

"Starting with "I think," Descartes fixed his attention only on the "think," completely neglecting the "I." Now, this I is essential. For Man, and consequently the Philosopher, is not only Consciousness, but also—and above all—Self-Consciousness. Man is not only a being that thinks—i.e., reveals Being by Logos, by Speech formed of words that have a meaning. He reveals in addition—also by Speech—the being that reveals Being, the being that he himself is, the revealing being that he opposes to the revealed being by giving it the name Ich or Selbst, I or Self."

"As long as algebra and geometry travelled separate paths their advance was slow and their applications limited. But when these two sciences joined company, they drew from each other fresh vitality and thenceforward marched on at a rapid pace towards perfection. It is to Descartes that we owe the application of algebra to geometry,—an application which has furnished the key to the greatest discoveries in all branches of mathematics."

"He has given us only some beautiful beginnings, without getting to the bottom of things. ...he is still far from the true analysis and the general art of discovery. For I am convinced that his mechanics is full of errors, that his physics goes too fast, that his geometry is too narrow, and that his metaphysics is all these things."

"As for Descartes, this is... not the place to praise a man whose genius is elevated beyond all praise. He certainly began the true and right way through the ideas, and that which leads so far; but since he had aimed at his own excessive applause, he seems to have broken off the thread of his investigation and to have been content with metaphysical meditations and geometrical studies by which he could draw attention to himself. For the rest, he set out to discover the nature of bodies for the purposes of medicine, rightly indeed, if he had completed the task of ordering the ideas of the mind, for a greater light than can well be imagined would have arisen from these very experiments. His failure to apply his mind to this problem can be explained by no other cause than that he did not adequately think through the full reason and force of the thing. For had he seen a method of setting up a reasonable philosophy with the same unanswerable clarity as arithmetic, he would hardly have used any way other than this to establish a sect of followers, a thing which he so earnestly wanted. For by applying this method of philosophizing, a school would from its very beginning, and by the very nature of things, assert its supremacy in the realm of reason in a geometrical manner and could never perish nor be shaken until the sciences themselves die through the rise of a new barbarism among mankind."

"The rationalism of René Descartes had a liberating effect on women because it assumed that the mind, not the body, was the instrument for sensation and knowledge and that men and women had the same potential for understanding. Cartesianism denied that formal education was the road to higher insight; anyone could think and reason logically. The effect of these ideas was not only to inspire a number of women, such as Mary Astell, Lady Damaris Masham, Marie de Gournay, to enter philosophical discourse with the outstanding male thinkers of their time, but it also helped them to create a new form for such a discourse through personal correspondence."

""There is one basis of science," says Descartes, "one test and rule of truth, namely, that whatever is clearly and distinctly conceived is true." A profound psychological mistake. It is true only of formal logic, wherein the mind never quits the sphere of its first assumptions to pass out into the sphere of real existences; no sooner does the mind pass from the internal order to the external order, than the necessity of verifying the strict correspondence between the two becomes absolute. The Ideal Test must be supplemented by the Real Test, to suit the new conditions of the problem."

"Functions are the bread and butter of modern scientists, statisticians, and economists. Once many repeated... experiments and observations produce the same functional interrelationships, those may acquire the... status of laws of nature—mathematical descriptions... Descartes' ideas... opened the door for a systematic mathematization of everything—the very essence of the notion that God is a mathematician. ...[B]y establishing the equivalence of two perspectives of mathematics (algebraic and geometric) previously considered disjoint, Descartes expanded the horizons of mathematics and paved the way to the modern era of analysis, which allows [us] to comfortably cross from one mathematical discipline to another."

"While Descartes' theory of vortices was spectacularly wrong (as Newton ruthlessly pointed out later), it was still interesting, being the first serious attempt to formulate a theory of the universe as a whole based upon the same laws that apply on the Earth's surface. In other words, to Descartes there was no difference between terrestrial and celestial phenomena—the Earth was part of a universe that obeyed uniform physical laws."

"The one book that turned out to be perhaps the most influential in guiding Newton's mathematical and scientific thought was none other than Descartes' La Géométrie. Newton read it in 1664 and re-read it several times until "by degrees he made himself master of the whole." ...Not only did analytic geometry pave the way for Newton's founding of calculus... but Newton's inner scientific spirit was truly set ablaze."

"By... confounding the properties of matter with those of space he arrives at the logical conclusion, that if the matter within a vessel could be entirely removed the space within the vessel would no longer exist. In fact he assumes that all space must be always full of matter."

"The primary property of matter was indeed distinctly announced by Descartes in what he calls the "First Law of Nature": "That every individual thing, so far as in it lies, perseveres in the same state, whether of motion or of rest.""

"Descartes... fell back on his original confusion of matter with space—space being, according to him, the only form of substance, and all existing things but affections of space. This error... forms one of the ultimate foundations of the system of Spinoza."

"The first and typical example of the application of mathematics to the indirect investigation of truth, is within the limits of the pure science itself; the application of algebra to geometry, the introduction of which, far more than any of his metaphysical speculations, has immortalized the name of Descartes, and constitutes the greatest single step ever made in the progress of the exact sciences. Its rationale is simple. It is grounded on the general truth, that the position of every point, the direction of every line, and consequently the shape and magnitude of every enclosed space, may be fixed by the length of perpendiculars thrown down upon two straight lines, or (when the third dimension of space is taken into account) upon three plane surfaces, meeting one another at right angles in the same point. A consequence or rather a part of this general truth is that, curve lines and surfaces may be determined by their equations."

"As in Mathematicks, so in Natural Philosophy, the Investigation of difficult Things by the Method of Analysis, ought ever to precede the Method of Composition."

""Do you know who first explained the true origin of the rainbow?" I asked. "It was Descartes," he said. After a moment he looked me in the eye. "And what do you think was the salient feature of the rainbow that inspired Descartes' mathematical analysis?" he asked. "Well, the rainbow is actually a section of a cone that appears as an arc of the colors of the spectrum when drops of water are illuminated by sunlight behind the observer." "And?" "I suppose his inspiration was the realization that the problem could be analyzed by considering a single drop, and the geometry of the situation." "You're overlooking a key feature of the phenomenon," he said. "Okay, I give up. What would you say inspired his theory?" "I would say his inspiration was that he thought rainbows were beautiful." I looked at him sheepishly. He looked at me. "How's your work coming?" he asked. I shrugged. "It's not really coming." I wished I was like Constantine. It all came so easily to him. "Let me ask you something. Think back to when you were a kid. For you, that isn't going too far back. When you were a kid, did you love science? Was it your passion?" I nodded. "As long as I can remember." "Me, too," he said. "Remember, it's supposed to be fun." And he walked on."

"Descartes ... is distinguished from Bacon in respect of the thoroughness of his education in the Scholastic philosophy and in the profound impression that geometrical demonstration had upon his mind, and the effect of these differences in education and inspiration is to make his formulation of the technique of inquiry more precise and in consequence more critical. His mind is oriented towards the project of an infallible and universal method or research, but since the method he propounds is modelled on that of geometry, its limitation when applied, not to possibilities but to things, is easily apparent. Descartes is more thorough than Bacon in doing his scepticism for himself and, in the end, he recognizes it to be an error to suppose that the method can ever be the sole means of inquiry. The sovereignty of technique turns out to be a dream and not a reality. Nevertheless, the lesson his successors believed themselves to have learned from Descartes was the sovereignty of technique and not his doubtfulness about the possibility of an infallible method."

"I would inquire of reasonable persons whether this principle: Matter is naturally wholly incapable of thought, and this other: I think, therefore I am, are in fact the same in the mind of Descartes, and in that of St. Augustine, who said the same thing twelve hundred years before. ...I am far from affirming that Descartes is not the real author of it, even if he may have learned it only in reading this distinguished saint; for I know how much difference there is between writing a word by chance without making a longer and more extended reflection on it, and perceiving in this word an admirable series of conclusions, which prove the distinction between material and spiritual natures, and making of it a firm and sustained principle of a complete metaphysical system, as Descartes has pretended to do. ...it is on this supposition that I say that this expression is as different in his writings from the saying in others who have said it by chance, as in a man full of life and strength, from a corpse."

"Descartes subscribed to the doctrine of instantaneous propagation, but with him something new emerged: for his was the first uncompromisingly mechanical theory that asserted the instantaneous propagation of light in a material medium... Indeed, mechanical analogies had been used to explain optical phenomena long before Descartes, but the Cartesian theory was the first clearly to assert that light itself was nothing but a mechanical property of the luminous object and of the transmitting medium. It is for this reason that we may regard Descartes' theory of light as legitimate starting point of modern physical optics."

"In the theory of the state of the seventeenth century, the monarch is identified with God and has in the state a position exactly analogous to that attributed to God in the Cartesian system of the world."

"Descartes is rightly regarded as the father of modern philosophy primarily and generally because he helped the faculty of reason to stand on its own feet by teaching men to use their brains in place whereof the Bible, on the one hand, and Aristotle, on the other, had previously served."

"Descartes may have made a lot of mistakes, but he was right about this: you cannot doubt the existence of your own consciousness. That's the first feature of consciousness, it's real and irreducible. You cannot get rid of it by showing that it's an illusion in a way that you can with other standard illusions."

"Modesty was not a condition from which Descartes suffered."

"Descartes's so-called dualism is often taken to represent a fundamental revolution in ideas and the starting point of modern philosophy. ...but in substance his work is... better understood as an attempt to conserve the old truths in the face of new threats. His dualism was in essence an armistice... between the established religion and the emerging science of his time. ...isolating the mind from the physical world... ensured that many of the central doctrines of orthodoxy—immortality of the soul, the freedom of will, and, in general, the "special" status of humankind—were rendered immune to any possible contravention by the scientific investigation of the physical world. ... For men such as Descartes, Malebranche, and Leibniz, solving the mind-body problem was vital to preserving the theological and political order inherited from the Middle Ages... For Spinoza, it was a means of destroying that same order and discovering a new foundation for human worth."

"Descartes... clearly understood the power of algebraic methods in geometry. He wanted to withhold this power from his contemporaries, however, particularly... Roberval... La Géométrie was written to boast about his discoveries, not to explain them. There is little systematic development, and proofs are frequently omitted with a sarcastic remark such as, "I shall not stop to explain... because I should deprive you of the pleasure...""

"[E]arly analytic geometers—Descartes in particular—did not accept that geometry could be based on numbers or algebra. Perhaps the first to take the idea of arithmetizing geometry seriously was Wallis..."

"Despite Newton's belated appreciation of Euclid's geometry, he set it aside as an undergraduate and immediately turned to Descartes' Geometrie, a much more difficult text. Newton read a few pages... and immediately got stuck. ...The second time through, he progressed a page or two further before running into more difficulties. Again, he read it from the beginning, this time getting further still. He continued this process until he mastered Descartes' text. Had Newton mastered Euclid first, Descartes' analytic geometry would have been much easier to understand. Newton later advised others not to make the same mistake. But Descartes had ignited Newton's interest in mathematics, an interest that bordered on obsession."

"Algebra had already been applied to geometry by other writers, as we have seen. The wholly new contribution made by Descartes was in importing the idea of motion into geometry. It is said that the idea came to him while lying in bed and watching the movements of a fly crawling near an angle of the room. He saw that its position at any moment could be defined by its perpendicular distance from the ceiling and two adjacent walls. Thus he saw a curve as described by a moving point, the point being the point of intersection of two moving lines which were always parallel to two fixed lines at right angles. As the moving point described the curve, its distances from the two fixed axes would vary in a manner characteristic of the curve, and an equation between these distances could be formed which would express some property of the curve. Algebraical transformations of this equation would then reveal other properties of the curve."

"How you picked your hypotheses (he argued) was of no importance whatever... even if picked at random. ...[A] hypothesis was to be judged by its fruits. ...Descartes' analogy between code-breaking and theory-making is excellent."

"It was left up to Newton to compute the detailed implications of the vortex-theory... and the result demolished the foundations of Descartes' cosmology."

"His decipherment of Nature might be crude, yet he had the courage to insist that the mechanical sense could be made of the workings of Nature, throughout the realms of physics, chemistry, and even physiology. By reasserting the unity and rationality of Nature, he did as much as any man to put seventeenth-century scientists back on the intellectual road first trodden by the Greeks."

"The mechanical philosophy is a case of being victimized by metaphor. I choose Descartes and Newton as excellent examples of metaphysicians of mechanism malgré eux, that is to say, as unconscious victims of the metaphor of the great machine. Together they have founded a church, more powerful than that founded by Peter and Paul, whose dogmas are now so entrenched that anyone who tries to reallocate the facts is guilty of more than heresy."

"Having laid down his rules of method, Descartes proceeded to deviate from them. We expect a demonstration of the truth after the principles have already been found, such as been prescribed by Plato. But we get a different way of accounting for the facts: "the way of hypothesis" proscribed by Plato. Unable to proceed further deductively, he resorted to the invention of and choice among different hypothesis, the choice being determined by crucial experiments. Thus he gave up the certainty of the a priori method in favor of the conjectural a posteriori. This meant that in his practice, the synthesis preceded analysis, for it preceded that form of it known as inductive testing."

"The truth is sum, ergo cogito — I am, therefore I think, although not everything that is thinks. Is not consciousness of thinking above all consciousness of being? Is pure thought possible, without consciousness of self, without personality? Can there exist pure knowledge without feeling, without that species of materiality which feelings lends to it? Do we not perhaps feel thought, and do we not feel ourselves in the act of knowing and willing? Could not the man in the stove [Descartes] have said: "I feel, therefore I am"? or "I will, therefore I am"? And to feel oneself, is it not perhaps to feel oneself imperishable?"

""Catatau" by Paulo Leminski captures that impulse as he imagines the French philosopher René Descartes driven mad by Brazil, a country where everything gets mixed and defies categorization."

"The first thing that we know about ourselves is our imperfection. This is what Descartes meant when he said: 'I know God before I know myself.' The only mark of God in us is that we feel that we are not God."

"After Bruno's death, during the first half of the seventeenth century, Descartes seemed about to take the leadership of human thought... in promoting an evolution doctrine as regards the mechanical formation of the solar system... but his constant dread of persecution, both from Catholics and Protestants, led him steadily to veil his thoughts and even to suppress them. The execution of Bruno had occurred in his childhood, and in the midst of his career he had watched the Galileo struggle in all its stages. He had seen his own works condemned by university after university under the direction of theologians and placed upon the Roman Index. ...Since Roger Bacon, perhaps, no great thinker had been so completely abased and thwarted by theological oppression."

"Man occupies a special place in the Cartesian scheme. He alone is endowed with mind. Descartes believed that animals did not possess one, that they were simply extremely complicated automatons. Other thinkers have rejected this point of view and proposed to endow all matter in the universe—living or inanimate—with consciousness. This "panpsychism" has been promoted by, among others, Teilhard de Chardin and, more recently by the British-American physicist Freeman Dyson, who holds that mind is present in every particle of matter."

"[He] came back to Paris towards the middle of October [1644]. At his Arrival, An Edition of his Principles of philosophy... and the Latine Translation of his Essays [he found] finished, and the Copies came out of Holland. The Treatise of Principles did not come out, neither did that Piece he called his World, nor his Course of Philosophy, both of which were suppress'd. He had a mind to divide them into other Parts: The First of which contains the Principles of Humane Knowledge, which one may call the first Philosophy or Metaphysicks: wherein it hath very much relation and connexion with his Meditations. The Second contains what is most general in Philosophy, and the Explanation of the first Laws of Nature, and of the principles of natural things, the Proprieties of Bodies, Space, and Motion, &c.The Third contains a particular Explanation, of the System of the World, and more especially of what we mean by the Heavens and Celestial Bodies.The Fourth contains whatsoever belongs to the Earth. That which is most remarkable in this Work, is, That the Author after having first of all established the distinction and difference he puts between the Soul and the Body, when he hath laid down, for the Principles of corporeal things, bigness, figure and local motion; all which are things in themselves so clear and intelligible, that they are granted and received by every one whatsoever; he hath found out a way to explain all Nature in a manner, and to give a reason of the most wonderful Effects, without altering the Principles; yea, and without being inconsistent with himself in any thing whatsoever. Yet... he [had] not the presumption for all that to believe he had hit upon the explication of all natural things, especially such that do not fall under our senses, in the same manner as they really and truly are in themselves. He should do something indeed, if he could but come the nearest that it was possible to likelihood or verisimilitude, to which others before him could never reach; and if he could bring the matter about, that, whatsoever he had written should exactly agree with all the Phenomena's of Nature, this he judged sufficient for the use of Life, the profit and benefit of which seems to be the main and only end one ought to propose to himself in Mechanicks, Physick, or Medicine; and in all Arts that may be brought to perfection by the help of Physick or natural Philosophy. But of all things he hath explained, there is not one of them that doth not seem at least morally certain in respect of the profit of life, notwithstanding they may be uncertain in respect of the absolute Power of God. Nay, there are several of them that are absolutely, or more than morally certain; such as are Mathematical Demonstrations, and those evident ratiocinations he hath framed concerning the existence of material things. Nevertheless, he was indued with that Modesty, as no where to assume the authority of positively deciding, or ever to assert any thing for undeniable. Altho' what he intended to offer, under the Name of Principles of Philosophy, was brought to that Conclusion, that one could not lawfully nor reasonably require more for the perfecting his design; yet did it give some cause to his Friends, to hope to see the Explication of all other things, which made people say, That his Physick was not compleat. He promised himself likewise to explain after the same manner, the nature of other more particular Bodies, that belong to the Terrestrial Globe; as, Minerals, Plants, Animals, and Man in particular; After which, he proposed to himself (according as God should please to lengthen out his days) to treat with the same exactness of all Physick or Medicine, of Mechanicks, and of the whole Doctrine of Morality or Ethicks; whereby to present the World with an entire Body of Philosophy."

"He dedicated his Book of Principles to his most Illustrious Disciple, Elizabeth, Princess Palatine of the Rhine... The Princess had been Educated in the Knowledge of abundance of Languages, and in whatsoever Learning is comprised under the name of Litterae humaniores, or Politiores; but the elevation of, and profoundness of her genius and natural parts, would not suffer her to dwell long upon these Arts, by which the greatest Wits of her Sex, who are satisfied with desiring to seem somebody, are commonly limited. She desir'd to proceed to those parts of Learning, that the strongest Application of Men had advanced, and accomplish'd her self with, and became a great proficient in Philosophy and Mathematicks; till such time as seeing the Essays of Monsieur Des Cartes his Philosophy, she conceived such high esteem and affection for his Doctrine, that she look'd upon all she had learn'd till that time as good as nothing; and so put her self under his Tuition for to raise a new Structure upon his Principles. Thereupon she sends to him, to come and see her, that she might drink in the true Phi∣osophy at the Fountain Head; and the great desire to do her Service nearer, was one of the reasons that drew him to Leiden & to Eindegeest. Never did Master more happily improve the docibility, aptness, penetration, and withal the solidity of a Scholar's Mind. Having accustomed her insensibly to the profound Meditation of the grand Mysteries of Nature, and sufficiently exercising of her in the most abstracted Questions of Geometry, and the most sublime ones of Metaphysicks. There was no longer any thing abstruse or mysterious to her; and he ingeniously confesseth and owneth, that he had not yet met with any besides her (he excepted Regius in another place) that ever arrived at a perfect understanding of the Works he had published till that time. By this Testimony that he bore to the extraordinary Capacity of the Princess, he intended to distinguish her from those who were not able to apprehend his Metaphysicks, altho' they might have some insight into Geometry; and from those that were not able to understand his Geometry, altho' they might be pretty well vers'd in Metaphysical Truths. She continued to Philosophise with him Viva voce, till a certain Accident obliged her to absent herself from the Presence of the Queen of Bohemia her Mother, and to quit her abode in Holland for Germany; then she changed her Acquaintance into an Intelligence by Letter, which she kept afoot with him, by the Ministery of the Princesses her Sisters."

"Among the earliest thinkers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, who employed their mental powers toward the destruction of old ideas and the up-building of new ones, ranks Rene Descartes. Though he professed orthodoxy in faith all his life, yet in science he was a profound sceptic. He found that the world's brightest thinkers had been long exercised in metaphysics, yet they had discovered nothing certain; nay, they had even flatly contradicted each other. ...The certainty of the conclusions in geometry and arithmetic brought out in his mind the contrast between the true and false ways of seeking the truth. He thereupon attempted to apply mathematical reasoning to all sciences."

"His philosophy has long since been superseded by other systems, but the analytical geometry of Descartes will remain a valuable possession forever."

"His Geometry is not easy reading. An edition appeared subsequently with notes by his friend De Beaune, which were intended to remove the difficulties."

"Descartes' geometry was called "analytical geometry," partly because unlike the synthetic geometry of the ancients it is actually analytical in the sense that the word is used in logic; and partly because the practice had then already arisen, of designating by the term analysis the calculus [i.e., symbolic calculation or computation] with general quantities."

"The first important example solved by Descartes in his geometry is the "problem of Pappus"... Of this celebrated problem the Greeks solved only the special case... By Descartes it was solved completely, and it afforded an excellent example of the use which can be made of his analytical method in the study of loci. Another solution was given later by Newton in the Principia."

"In mechanics Descartes can hardly be said to have advanced beyond Galileo. ...His statement of the first and second laws of motion was an improvement in form, but his third law is false in substance. The motions of bodies in their direct impact was imperfectly understood by Galileo, erroneously given by Descartes, and first correctly stated by Wren, Wallis, and Huygens."

"It is frequently stated that Descartes was the first to apply algebra to geometry. This statement is inaccurate, for Vieta and others had done this before him. Even the Arabs some times used algebra in connection with geometry. The new step that Descartes did take was the introduction into geometry of an analytical method based on the notion of variables and constants, which enabled him to represent curves by algebraic equations. In the Greek geometry, the idea of motion was wanting, but with Descartes it became a very fruitful conception. By him a point on a plane was determined in position by its distances from two fixed right lines or axes. These distances varied with every change of position in the point. This geometric idea of co-ordinate representation, together with the algebraic idea of two variables in one equation having an indefinite number of simultaneous values, furnished a method for the study of loci, which is admirable for the generality of its solutions. Thus the entire conic sections of Apollonius is wrapped up and contained in a single equation of the second degree."

"In the Greek geometry the idea of motion was wanting but with Descartes it became a very fruitful conception. ...This geometric idea of co-ordinate representation, together with the algebraic idea of two variables in one equation having an indefinite number of simultaneous values, furnished a method for the study of loci, which is admirable for the generality of its solutions. Thus the entire conic sections of Apollonius is wrapped up and contained in a single equation of the second degree."

"It is frequently stated that Descartes was the first to apply algebra to geometry. This statement is inaccurate, for Vieta and others had done this before him. Even the Arabs sometimes used algebra in connection with geometry."

"Methods of drawing tangents were invented by Roberval and Fermat... Descartes gave a third method. Of all the problems which he solved by his geometry, none gave him as great pleasure as his mode of constructing tangents. It is profound but operose, and, on that account, inferior to Fermat's. His solution rests on the method of Indeterminate Coefficients, of which he bears the honour of invention. Indeterminate coefficients were employed by him also in solving bi-quadratic equations."

"An optimist may see a light where there is none, but why must the pessimist always run to blow it out?"

"Doubt is the origin of wisdom and Latin: Dubium sapientiae initium. This has been attributed to Descartes, including here previously, but no original attribution has been found. Descartes Meditationes de prima philosophia has been cited as the source of Dubium sapientiae initium, but this quote is not found in this work."

"If one only wished to be Sad, this could be horrible for the rest of civilisation; but we wish to be happier than other people, and this is always difficult, for we believe others to be happier than they are."

"In a free nation, it matters not whether individuals reason well or ill; it is sufficient that they do reason. Truth arises from the collision and from hence springs liberty, which is a security from the effects of reasoning."

"The laws of Rome had wisely divided public power among a large number of magistracies, which supported, checked and tempered each other. Since they all had only limited power, every citizen was qualified for them, and the people — seeing many persons pass before them one after the other — did not grow accustomed to any in particular. But in these times the system of the republic changed. Through the people the most powerful men gave themselves extraordinary commissions — which destroyed the authority of the people and magistrates, and placed all great matters in the hands of one man, or a few."

"Il n’y a point de plus cruelle tyrannie que celle que l’on exerce à l’ombre des lois et avec les couleurs de la justice, lorsqu’on va, pour ainsi dire, noyer des malheureux sur la planche même sur laquelle ils s’étaient sauvés."

"Not to be loved is a misfortune, but it is an insult to be loved no longer."

"[The Ottoman Empire] whose sick body was not supported by a mild and regular diet, but by a powerful treatment, which continually exhausted it."

"[The Pope] will make the king believe that three are only one, that the bread he eats is not bread...and a thousand other things of the same kind."

"I can assure you that no kingdom has ever had as many civil wars as the kingdom of Christ."

"Do you think that God will punish them for not practicing a religion which he did not reveal to them?"

"A man should be mourned at his birth, not at his death."

"In France there are three kinds of professions: the church, the sword, and the long robe. Each hath a sovereign contempt for the other two. For example, a man who ought to be despised only for being a fool is often so because he is a lawyer."

"People here argue about religion interminably, but it appears that they are competing at the same time to see who can be the least devout."

"Oh, how empty is praise when it reflects back to its origin!"

"Christians are beginning to lose the spirit of intolerance which animated them: experience has shown the error of the expulsion of the Jews from Spain, and of the persecution of those Christians in France whose belief differed a little from that of the king. They have realized that zeal for the advancement of religion is different from a due attachment to it; and that in order to love it and fulfill its behests, it is not necessary to hate and persecute those who are opposed to it."

"History is full of religious wars; but, we must take care to observe, it was not the multiplicity of religions that produced these wars, it was the intolerating spirit which animated that one which thought she had the power of governing."

"And yet there is nothing so badly imagined: nature seems to have provided, that the follies of men should be transient, but they by writing books render them permanent. A fool ought to content himself with having wearied those who lived with him: but he is for tormenting future generations; he is desirous that his folly should triumph over oblivion, which he ought to have enjoyed as well as his grave; he is desirous that posterity should be informed that he lived, and that it should be known for ever that he was a fool."

"Of all kind of authors there are none I despise more than compilers, who search every where for shreds of other men's works, which they join to their own, like so many pieces of green turf in a garden: they are not at all superior to compositors in a printing house, who range the types, which, collected together, make a book, towards which they contribute nothing but the labours of the hand. I would have original writers respected, and it seems to me a kind of profanation to take those pieces from the sanctuary in which they reside, and to expose them to a contempt they do not deserve. When a man hath nothing new to say, why does not he hold his tongue? What business have we with this double employment?"

"I write to thee on this subject, [friend], because I am angry at a book which I have just left, which is so large, that it seems to contain universal science, but it hath almost split my head, without teaching me anything."

"Life was given to me as a favor, so I may abandon it when it is one no longer."

"I acknowledge that history is full of religious wars: but we must distinguish; it is not the multiplicity of religions which has produced wars; it is the intolerant spirit animating that which believed itself in the ascendant."

"There are only two cases in which war is just: first, in order to resist the aggression of an enemy, and second, in order to help an ally who has been attacked."

"There is only one thing that can form a bond between men, and that is gratitude...we cannot give someone else greater power over us than we have ourselves."

"I have read descriptions of Paradise that would make any sensible person stop wanting to go there."

"La raillerie est un discours en faveur de son esprit contre son bon naturel."

"Le succès de la plupart des choses dépend de savoir combien il faut de temps pour réussir."

"J'ai toujours vu que, pour réussir dans le monde, il fallait avoir l'air fou et être sage."

"Horace et Aristote nous ont déjà parlé des vertus de leurs pères, et des vices de leur temps, et les auteurs de siècle en siècle nous en ont parlé de même. S'ils avaient dit vrai, les hommes seraient à présent des ours."

"Si je savais une chose utile à ma nation qui fût rui­neuse à une autre, je ne la pro­po­se­rais pas à mon prince, parce que je suis homme avant d’être Français, parce que je suis néces­sai­re­ment homme, et que je ne suis Français que par hasard"

"You have to study a great deal to know a little."

"One must give one power a ballast, so to speak, to put it in a position to resist another."

"Democratic and aristocratic states are not in their own nature free. Political liberty is to be found only in moderate governments; and even in these it is not always found. It is there only when there is no abuse of power. But constant experience shows us that every man who has power is inclined to abuse it; he goes until he finds limits. Is it not strange, though true, to say that virtue itself has need of limits?. To prevent this abuse, it is necessary that, by the arrangement of things, power shall stop power. A government may be so constituted, as no man shall be compelled to do things to which the law does not oblige him, nor forced to abstain from things which the law permits."

"In every government there are three sorts of power: the legislative; the executive in respect to things dependent on the law of nations; and the executive in regard to matters that depend on the civil law. By virtue of the first, the prince or magistrate enacts temporary or perpetual laws, and amends or abrogates those that have been already enacted. By the second, he makes peace or war, sends or receives embassies, establishes the public security, and provides against invasions. By the third, he punishes criminals, or determines the disputes that arise between individuals. The latter we shall call the judiciary power, and the other, simply, the executive power of the state. When the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person, or in the same body of magistrates, there can be no liberty; because apprehensions may arise, lest the same monarch or senate should enact tyrannical laws, to execute them in a tyrannical manner. Again, there is no liberty if the judiciary power be not separated from the legislative and executive. Were it joined with the legislative, the life and liberty of the subject would be exposed to arbitrary control; for the judge would be then the legislator. Were it joined to the executive power, the judge might behave with violence and oppression. There would be an end of every thing, were the same man, or the same body, whether of the nobles or of the people, to exercise those three powers, that of enacting laws, that of executing the public resolutions, and of trying the causes of individuals. The executive power ought to be in the hands of a monarch, because this branch of government, having need of dispatch, is better administered by one than by many: on the other hand, whatever depends on the legislative power, is oftentimes better regulated by many than by a single person. But, if there were no monarch, and the executive power should be committed to a certain number of persons, selected from the legislative body, there would be an end of liberty, by reason the two powers would be united; as the same persons would sometimes possess, and would be always able to possess, a share in both."

"It is a paralogism to say, that the good of the individual should give way to that of the public; this can never take place, except when the government of the community, or, in other words, the liberty of the subject is concerned; this does not affect such cases as relate to private property, because the public good consists in everyone's having his property, which was given him by the civil laws, invariably preserved."

"Useless laws weaken the necessary laws."

"[The Spirit of the Laws] became the nobleman's Bible all over Europe."

"You say, my dear sir, that they read Montesquieu — I believe not. If they do, they do not understand him. He is often obscure, sometimes misled by system; but, on the whole, a learned, and ingenious writer, and sometimes a most profound thinker. Sure it is, that they have not followed him in any one thing they have done. Had he lived at this time, he would certainly be among the fugitives from France."

"Place...before your eyes, such a man as Montesquieu. Think of a genius not born in every country, or every time; a man gifted by nature with a penetrating aquiline eye; with a judgment prepared with the most extensive erudition; with an herculean robustness of mind, and nerves not to be broken with labour; a man who could spend twenty years in one pursuit."

"When I recollect what the President Montesquieu has written, I am at a loss to tell, why I should treat of human affairs: But I too am instigated by my reflections, and my sentiments; and I may utter them more to the comprehension of ordinary capacities, because I am more on the level of ordinary men. If it be necessary to pave the way for what follows on the general history of nations, by giving some account of the heads under which various forms of government may be conveniently ranged, the reader should perhaps be referred to what has been already delivered on the subject by this profound politician and amiable moralist. In his writings will be found, not only the original of what I am now, for the sake of order, to copy from him, but likewise probably the source of many observations, which, in different places, I may, under the belief of invention, have repeated, without quoting their author."

"He had been a great reader, and had commonplaced every thing he read. At length he wished to undertake some work into which he could bring his whole commonplace book in a digested form. He fixed on the subject of his Spirit of Laws, and wrote the book. He consulted his friend Helvetius about publishing it, who strongly dissuaded it. He published it, however, and the world did not confirm Helvetius' opinion. Still, every man who reflects as he reads, has considered it as a book of paradoxes; having, indeed, much of truth and sound principle, but abounding also with inconsistencies, apocryphal facts and false inferences."

"In recent times it has been held by many economists that the rate of current saving determined the supply of free capital, that the rate of current investment governed the demand for it, and that the rate of interest was, so to speak, the equilibrating price-factor determined by the point of intersection of the supply curve of savings and the demand curve of investment. But if aggregate saving is necessarily and in all circumstances exactly equal to aggregate investment, it is evident that this explanation collapses. We have to search elsewhere for the solution. I find it in the idea that it is the function of the rate of interest to preserve equilibrium, not between the demand and the supply of new capital goods, but between the demand and the supply of money, that is to say between the demand for liquidity and the means of satisfying this demand. I am here returning to the doctrine of the older, pre-nineteenth century economists. Montesquieu, for example, saw this truth with considerable clarity,— Montesquieu who was the real French equivalent of Adam Smith, the greatest of your economists, head and shoulders above the physiocrats in penetration, clear-headedness and good sense (which are the qualities an economist should have). But I must leave it to the text of this book to show how in detail all this works out."

"Montesquieu, of course, is like a great searchlight overtopping all of them from Aristotle."

"The British constitution was to Montesquieu, what Homer has been to the didactic writers on epic poetry. As the latter have considered the work of the immortal bard, as the perfect model from which the principles and rules of the epic art were to be drawn, and by which all similar works were to be judged; so this great political critic appears to have viewed the constitution of England as the standard, or to use his own expression, as the mirror of political liberty; and to have delivered in the form of elementary truths, the several characteristic principles of that particular system."

"Montesquieu has resolved the great operative principles of government into fear, honor, and virtue, applying the first to pure despotisms, the second to regular monarchies, and the third to republics. The portion of truth blended with the ingenuity of this system, sufficiently justifies the admiration bestowed on its author. Its accuracy however can never be defended against the criticisms which it has encountered. Montesquieu was in politics not a Newton or a Locke, who established immortal systems, the one in matter, the other in mind. He was in his particular science what Bacon was in universal science: He lifted the veil from the venerable errors which enslaved opinion, and pointed the way to those luminous truths of which he had but a glimpse himself."

"The great Montesquieu pointed out the road. He was the Lord Bacon in this branch of philosophy. Dr. Smith is the Newton."

"Montesquiou's Espirit des loix; which I think the best book that was ever written—at least I never learned half as much from all I ever read. There is as much wit in it as there is practical knowledge."

"Christ has a cosmic body that extends throughout the universe."

"The future is more beautiful than all the pasts."

"Science will, in all probability, be increasingly impregnated by mysticism."

"I am far from denying the destructive and disintegrating forces of passion. I will go so far as to agree that apart from the reproductive function, men have hitherto used love, on the whole, as an instrument of self-corruption and intoxication. But what do these excesses prove? Because fire consumes and electricity can kill are we to stop using them? The feminine is the most formidable of the forces of matter. True enough. "Very well, then," say the moralists, "we must avoid it." "Not at all," I reply, "we take hold of it." In every domain of the real (physical, affective, intellectual) "danger" is a sign of power. Only a mountain can create a terrifying drop. The customary education of the Christian conscience tends to make us confuse tutiorism with prudence, safety with truth. Avoiding the risk of transgression has become more important to us than carrying a difficult position for God. And it is this that is killing us. "The more dangerous a thing, the more is its conquest ordained by life": it is from that conviction that the modern world has emerged; and from that our religion, too, must be reborn."

"The truth is, indeed, that love is the threshold of another universe. Beyond the vibrations with which we are familiar, the rainbow-like range of its colours is still in full growth. But, for all the fascination that the lower shades have for us, it is only towards the "ultra" that the creation of light advances. It is in these invisible and, we might almost say, immaterial zones that we can look for true initiation into unity. The depths we attribute to matter are no more than the reflection of the peaks of spirit."

"What paralyzes life is lack of faith and lack of audacity. The difficulty lies not in solving problems but expressing them. And so we cannot avoid this conclusion: it is biologically evident that to gain control of passion and so make it serve spirit must be a condition of progress. Sooner or later, then, the world will brush aside our incredulity and take this step : because whatever is the more true comes out into the open, and whatever is better is ultimately realized. The day will come when, after harnessing the ether, the winds, the tides, gravitation, we shall harness for God the energies of love. And, on that day, for the second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire."

"There is neither spirit nor matter in the world; the stuff of the universe is spirit-matter. No other substance but this could produce the human molecule. I know very well that this idea of spirit-matter is regarded as a hybrid monster, a verbal exorcism of a duality which remains unresolved in its terms. But I remain convinced that the objections made to it arise from the mere fact that few people can make up their minds to abandon an old point of view and take the risk of a new idea. ... Biologists or philosophers cannot conceive a biosphere or noosphere because they are unwilling to abandon a certain narrow conception of individuality. Nevertheless, the step must be taken. For in fact, pure spirituality is as unconceivable as pure materiality. Just as, in a sense, there is no geometrical point, but as many structurally different points as there are methods of deriving them from different figures, so every spirit derives its reality and nature from a particular type of universal synthesis."

"The reality of spirit-matter is inevitably translated into and confirmed by a structure of the spirit."

"Through the incarnation God descended into nature in order to super-animate and take it back to him."

"Personally, I stick to my idea that we are watching the birth, more than the death, of a World. The scandal for you, is that England and France should have come to this tragedy because they have sincerely tried the road of peace. But did they not precisely make a mistake on the true meaning of "peace"? Peace cannot mean anything but a HIGHER PROCESS OF CONQUEST. ... The world is bound to belong to its most active elements. ... Just now, the Germans deserve to win because, however bad or mixed is their spirit, they have more spirit than the rest of the world. It is easy to criticize and despise the fifth column. But no spiritual aims or energy will ever succeed, or even deserve to succeed, unless it is able to spread and keep spreading a fifth column."

"We only have to look around us to see how complexity and psychic temperature are still rising: and rising no longer on the scale of the individual but now on that of the planet. This indication is so familiar to us that we cannot but recognize the objective, experiential, reality of a transformation of the planet as a whole."

"Above all I feel that you must resign yourself to taking me as I am, that is, with the congenital quality (or weakness) which ever since my childhood has caused my spiritual life to be completely dominated by a sort of profound 'feeling' for the organic realness of the World. At first it was an ill-defined feeling in my mind and heart, but as the years have gone by it has gradually become a precise, compelling sense of the Universe's general convergence upon itself; a convergence which coincides with, and culminates at its zenith in, him in quo omina constant, and whom the Society has taught me to love."

"I can truly say — and this in virtue of the whole structure of my thought — that I now feel more indissolubly bound to the hierarchical Church and to the Christ of the Gospel than ever before in my life. Never has Christ seemed to me more real, more personal or more immense."

"Since once again, O Lord, in the steppes of Asia, I have no bread, no wine, no altar, I will raise myself above those symbols to the pure majesty of reality, and I will offer to you, I, your priest, upon the altar of the entire earth, the labor and the suffering of the world. Receive, O Lord, in its totality the Host which creation, drawn by your magnetism, presents to you at the dawn of a new day. This bread, our effort, is in itself, I know, nothing but an immense disintegration. This wine, our anguish, as yet, alas! is only an evaporating beverage. But in the depths of this inchoate Mass you have placed — I am certain, for I feel it — an irresistible and holy desire that moves us all, the impious as well as the faithful to cry out: "O Lord, make us one!""

"Mankind is now caught up, as though in a train of gears, at the heart of a continually accelerating vortex of self-totalisation"

"This soul can only be a conspiracy of individuals"

"If THIS book is to be properly understood, it must be read not as a work on metaphysics, still less as a... theological essay, but purely and simply as a scientific treatise."

"This book deals with man solely as a phenomenon; but... with the whole pheneomenon..."

"The degree of concentration of a consciousness varies in inverse ratio to the simplicity of the material compound... Spiritual perfection (or conscious 'centreity') and material synthesis (or complexity) are but two aspects or connected parts of one and the same phenomenon."

"In sum, all the rest of this essay will be nothing but the story of the struggle in the universe between the unified multiple and the unorganized multitude: the full application of great Law of complexity and consciousness: a law that... implies a psychically convergent structure and curvature of the world."

"There is no concept more familiar... than... spiritual energy, yet there is none... more opaque scientifically."

"Nowhere... is the need more urgent of building a bridge between the... the physical and the moral..."

"To connect the two energies, of the body and the soul, in a coherent manner: science has provisionally decided to ignore the question... caught up as we are here in the logic of a system where the within of things has just as much or... more value than their without... we must advance."

"Sometimes we need bread, sometimes wine, sometimes a tonic or a hormone injection, sometimes the stimulation of a colour, sometimes the magic of a sound which goes in at our ears as a vibration and reaches our brains in the form of inspiration. ...[T]here is something through which material and spiritual energy hold together and are complementary. ...[T]here must be a single energy operating in the world. ...[T]he 'soul' must be ...a focal point of transformation ...[F]orces of bodies converge, to become interiorised and sublimated in beauty and truth. ...Yet, ...direct transformation of one of these two energies into the other... has to be abandoned. As... we try to couple them... their mutual independence becomes as clear as their interrelation."

"To the cosmic corpuscles we should find it natural to attribute an individual radius of action as limited as their dimensions. We find, on the contrary, that each of them can only be defined by virtue of its influence on all around it. Whatever space we suppose it to be in, each cosmic element radiates in it and entirely fills it. However narrowly the heart of an atom may be circumscribed, its realm is co-extensive, at least potentially, with that of every other atom. This strange property we will come across again, even in the human molecule."

"[W]e realise... the fact and... reason for the diversity of animal behaviour. From the moment we regard evolution as... psychical transformation, we see... a multitude of forms of instincts each corresponding to a... solution of the problem of life. The 'psychical' make-up of an insect is not and cannot be that of a vertebrate ; nor can... [that] of a squirrel be that of a cat or... elephant: this in virtue of the position[s]... on the tree of life. ...[W]e begin to see ...a gradation formed. If instinct is a variable dimension, the instincts will... create, beneath their complexity, a growing system. They will form as a whole a... fan-like structure in which the higher terms on each nervure are recognised... by a greater range of choice and depending on a better defined centre of coordination and consciousness. ...The 'psychical' make-up of a dog... is... superior to that of a mole or a fish. ...[T]he upholders of the spiritual explanation have no need to be disconcerted when they see... in the higher animals (particularly in the great apes) ways and reactions which strangely recall... 'a reasoning soul'. If the story of life is no more than a movement of consciousness veiled by morphology, it is inevitable that... in the proximity of man, the 'psychical' make-ups seem to reach the borders of intelligence."

"When water is heated to boiling... and one goes on heating it, the first thing that follows—without change of temperature—is a tumultuous expansion of freed and vaporised molecules. Or, taking a series of sections from the base towards the summit of a cone, their area decreases constantly; then suddenly, with another infinitesimal displacement, the surface vanishes leaving us with a point. Thus... we are able to imagine the mechanism involved in the critical threshold of reflection. ...[N]ervous systems followed pari passu the process of increased complication and concentration. Finally, with the primates, an instrument was fashioned so remarkably supple and rich that the step immediately following could not take place without the whole animal psychism being... recast and consolidated on itself. ...When the anthropoid... had been brought 'mentally' to boiling point.... Or... had almost reached the summit of the cone, a final effort took place along the axis. ...What was previously only a centred surface became a centre. By a tiny 'tangential' increase, the 'radial' was turned back on itself and... took an infinite leap forward. Outwardly, almost nothing in the organs had changed. But in depth, a great revolution... consciousness was now leaping and boiling in a space of super-sensory relationships and representations; and simultaneously... was capable of perceiving itself... for the first time."

"Those who adopt the spiritual explanation are right when they defend... a... transcendence of man over the rest of nature. But neither are the materialists wrong when they maintain that man is just one further term in a series of animal forms. Here, as in so many cases, the two antithetical kinds of evidences are resolved in a movement... to the highly natural... 'change of state'. From the cell to the thinking animal, as from the atom to the cell, a single process (a psychical kindling or concentration) goes on without interruption... in the same direction. But by virtue of this permanence in the operation, it is inevitable... that certain leaps... transform the subject of the operation."

"Discontinuity in continuity: that is how... the birth of thought, like that of life, presents... and defines itself."

"A glow ripples outward from the first spark of conscious reflection. The point of ignition grows larger. The fire spreads in ever widening circles till finally the whole planet is covered with incandescence. Only one interpretation, only one name can be found worthy of this grand phenomenon. Much more coherent and just as extensive as any preceding layer, it is really a new layer, the 'thinking layer', which, since its germination at the end of the period, has spread over and above the world of plants and animals. In other words, outside and above the biosphere there is the ."

"Is evolution a theory, a system or a hypothesis? It is much more: it is a general condition to which all theories, all hypotheses, all systems must bow and which they must satisfy henceforward if they are to be thinkable and true. Evolution is a light illuminating all facts, a curve that all lines must follow."

"If there were no internal propensity to unite, even at a prodigiously rudimentary level—indeed in the molecule itself—it would be physically impossible for love to appear higher up, with us, in hominized form. . . . Driven by the forces of love, the fragments of the world seek each other so that the world may come into being."

"Love alone is capable of uniting living beings in such a way as to complete and fulfill them, for it alone takes them and joins them by what is deepest in themselves. All we need is to imagine our ability to love developing until it embraces the totality of men and the earth."

"A universal love is not only psychologically possible; it is the only complete and final way in which we are able to love."

"The radical defect in all forms of belief in progress, as they are expressed in positivist credos, is that they do not definitely eliminate death. What is the use of detecting a focus of any sort in the van of evolution if that focus can and must one day disintegrate? To satisfy the ultimate requirements of our action, Omega must be independent of the collapse of the forces with which evolution is woven."

"Actuality, irreversibility. ...Omega ...is discovered ...at the end ...[I]n it the movement culminates. Yet... under this evolutive facet Omega still only reveals half of itself. While being the last term of its series, it is also outside all series. ...If by its very nature it did not escape from time and space which it gathers together, it would not be Omega."

"Autonomy, actuality, irreversibility, and... transcendence are the four attributes of Omega. In this way... we... enclose the energy-complex of our universe. ...Contrary to the appearances still admitted by physics, the Great Stability is not at the bottom in the infra-elementary sphere, but at the top in the ultra-synthetic sphere. ...[E]ntirely by its tangential envelope ...the world goes on dissipating itself in a chance way into matter. By its radial nucleus it finds its shape and... consistency in gravitating against the tide of probability towards a divine focus of mind which draws it onward. Thus something in the cosmos escapes from entropy, and does so more and more."

"However convergent it be, evolution cannot attain to fulfilment on earth except through a point of dissociation. With this we are introduced to a fantastic and inevitable event which now begins to take shape in our perspective, the event which comes nearer with every day that passes: the end of all life on our globe, the death of the planet, the ultimate phase of the phenomenon of man."

"Noogenesis rises upwards in us and through us unceasingly. ...[T]he closer association of the grains of thought; the synthesis of individuals and of nations or races; the need of an autonomous and supreme personal focus to bind elementary personalities... in an atmosphere of active sympathy. ...[A]ll this results from the combined action of two curvatures—the roundness of the earth and the cosmic convergence of mind—in conformity with the law of complexity and consciousness."

"Now when sufficient elements have sufficiently agglomerated, this essentially convergent movement will attain such intensity and such quality that mankind, taken as a whole, will be obliged—as happened to the individual forces of instinct—to reflect upon itself at a single point; that is to say, in this case, to abandon its organo-planetary foothold so as to shift its centre on to the transcendent centre of its increasing concentration. This will be the end and the fulfillment of the spirit of the earth. The end of the world: the wholesale internal introversion upon itself of the , which has simultaneously reached the uttermost limit of its complexity and its centrality. The end of the world: the overthrow of equilibrium, detaching the mind, fulfilled at last, from its material matrix, so that it will henceforth rest with all its weight on God-Omega."

"Are we to foresee man seeking to fullfil himself collectively upon himself, or personally on a greater than himself? Refusal or acceptance of Omega? ... Universal love would only vivify and detach finally a fraction of the noosphere so as to consummate it—the part which decided to "cross the threshold", to get outside itself into the other."

"The death of the materially exhausted planet; the split of the noosphere, divided on the form to be given to its unity; and simultaneously (endowing the event with all its significance and with all its value) the liberation of that percentage of the universe which, across time, space and evil, will have succeeded in laboriously synthesising itself to the very end. Not an indefinite progress, which is an hypothesis contradicted by the convergent nature of noogenesis, but an ecstasy transcending the dimensions and the framework of the visible universe."

"As a result of changes which, over the last century, have modified our empirically based pictures of the world and hence the moral value of many of its elements, the "human religious ideal" inclines to stress certain tendencies and to express itself in terms which seem, at first sight, no longer to coincide with the "christian religious ideal"."

"At the heart of our universe, each soul exists for God, in our Lord."

"God is inexhaustibly attainable in the totality of our action."

"By virtue of creation, and still more the incarnation, nothing here is profane for those who know how to see."

"Those who spread their sails in the right way to the winds of the earth will always find themselves born by a current towards the open seas."

"We are like soldiers who fall during the assault which leads to peace."

"In the spiritual life, as in all organic processes, everyone has their optimum and it is just as harmful to go beyond it as not to attain it."

"All the communions of a life-time are one communion. All the communions of all men now living are one communion. All the communions of all men, present, past and future, are one communion."

"A breeze passes in the night. When did it spring up? Whence does it come? Whither is it going? No man knows."

"The world can no more have two summits than a circumference can have two centres."

"In the "Alexandrian" explanation described above, the multiple from which evolution emerges is both secondary and sinful from its origin: it represents in fact (an idea that smacks of Manicheanism and the Hindu metaphysical systems) broken and pulverized unity. Starting from a very much more modern and completely different point of view, let us assert, as our original postulate, that, the multiple (that is, non-being, if taken in the pure state) being the only rational form of a creatable (creabile) nothingness, the creative act is comprehensible only as a gradual process of arrangement and unification, which amounts to accepting that to create is to unite. And, indeed, there is nothing to prevent our holding that union creates. To the objection that union presupposes already existing elements, I shall answer that physics has just shown us (in the case of mass) that experientially (and for all the protests of "common sense") the moving object exists only as the product of its motion."

"In its most general form and from the point of view of physics, love is the internal, affectively apprehended, aspect of the affinity which links and draws together the elements of the world, centre to centre. This is how it has been understood by the great philosophers from Plato, the poet, to Nicolas of Cusa and other representatives of frigid scholasticism. Once this definition has been accepted, it gives rise to a series of important consequences. Love is power of producing inter-centric relationship. It is present, therefore (at least in a rudimentary state), in all the natural centres, living and pre-living, which make up the world; and it represents, too, the most profound, most direct, and most creative form of inter-action that it is possible to conceive between those centres. Love, in fact, is the expression and the agent of universal synthesis."

"We are not human beings having a spiritual experience; we are spiritual beings having a human experience."

"Joy is the most infallible sign of the presence of God."

"The astonishing resonance of his research, as well as the brilliance of his personality and richness of his thinking, have profoundly marked our epoch. In him, a powerful poetic intuition of nature's profound value, a sharp perception of creation's dynanism, and a broad vision of the world's future join together with an incontestable religious fervor. Similarly, his unremitting desire to dialogue with the science of his time and his bold optimism about the evolution of the world have given his intuitions — through the rich variety of his words and the magic of his images — considerable influence. Completely turned to the future, this synthesis, often lyrical and animated with passion for the universal, will help to restore hope to those assailed by doubts. ... What our contemporaries will undoubtedly remember, beyond the difficulties of conception and deficiencies of expression in this audacious attempt to reach a synthesis, is the testimomy of the coherent life of a man possessed by Christ in the depths of his soul. He was concerned with honoring both faith and reason, and anticipated the response to John Paul II's appeal: "Be not afraid, open, open wide to Christ the doors of the immense domains of culture, civilization, and progress.""

"In his own poetic style, the French Jesuit Teilhard de Chardin liked to meditate on the Eucharist as the firstfruits of the new creation. In an essay called The Monstrance he describes how, kneeling in prayer, he had a sensation that the Host was beginning to grow until at last, through its mysterious expansion, "the whole world had become incandescent, had itself become like a single giant Host." Although it would probably be incorrect to imagine that the universe will eventually be transubstantiated, Teilhard correctly identified the connection between the Eucharist and the final glorification of the cosmos."

"In every age, said scientist-philosopher Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, man has proclaimed himself at a turning point in history. " And to a certain extent, as he is advancing on a rising spiral, he has not been wrong. But there are moments when this impression of transformation becomes accentuated and is thus particularly justified." Teilhard prophesied the phenomenon central to this book: a conspiracy of men and women whose new perspective would trigger a critical contagion of change. Throughout history virtually all efforts to remake society began by altering its outward form and organization."

"There are really only two ways, it seems to me, in which we can think about our existence here on Earth. We either agree with Macbeth that life is nothing more than a "tale told by an idiot," a purposeless emergence of life-forms including the clever, greedy, selfish, and unfortunate species that we call homo sapiens — the "evolutionary goof." Or we believe that, as Pierre Teilhard de Chardin put it, "There is something afoot in the universe, something that looks like gestation and birth." In other words, a plan, a purpose to it all."

"It can be said that he applied his whole life, his tremendous intellect and his great spiritual faith to the concept of building up a philosophy that would reconcile Christian theology with the scientific theory of evolution, that would relate the facts of religious experience to those of natural science. The Phenomenon of Man is Pierre Teilhard's most important book and contains the quintessence of his thought. Its subject could be described as the surging evolution of the world from the primal stuff of the universe, through life, to consciousness and man."

"Yet the greater part of it, I shall show, is nonsense, tricked out with a variety of metaphysical conceits, and its author can be excused of dishonesty only on the grounds that before deceiving others he has taken great pains to deceive himself."

"What Teilhard seems to be trying to say is that evolution is often (he says always) accompanied by an increase of orderliness or internal coherence or degree of integration. In what sense is the fertilized egg that develops into an adult human being 'higher' than, say, a bacterial cell? In the sense that it contains richer and more complicated genetical instructions for the execution of those processes that together constitute development. Thus Teilhard's radial, spiritual or psychic energy may be equated to 'information'... in the sense... made... precise by modern communication engineers. To equate it to consciousness, or to regard degree of consciousness as a measure of information content, is one of the silly little metaphysical conceits... Teilhard's belief, enthusiastically shared by Sir Julian Huxley, that evolution flouts or foils the second law of thermodynamics is based on a confusion of thought; and the idea that evolution has a main track or privileged axis is unsupported by scientific evidence."

"You can't fit the Almighty into your intellectual categories. I might suggest that you look into some of the works of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (The Phenomenom of Man et al.). He was a paleontologist-helped to discover Peking man-and also a man of God. I don't suggest you go to him for answers but for different questions, for that stretching of the imagination that you need to make you a sceptic in the face of much that you are learning, much of which is new and shocking but which when boiled down becomes less so and takes its place in the general scheme of things."

"It must be regarded as an important service of Teilhard de Chardin's that he rethought these ideas from the angle of the modern view of the world and, in spite of a not entirely unobjectionable tendency toward the biological approach, nevertheless on the whole grasped them correctly and in any case made them accessible once again. Let us listen to his own words: The human monad “can only be absolutely itself by ceasing to be alone”. In the background is the idea that in the cosmos, alongside the two orders or classes of the infinitely small and the infinitely big, there is a third order, which determines the real drift of evolution, namely, the order of the infinitely complex. It is the real goal of the ascending process of growth or becoming; it reaches a first peak in the genesis of living things and then continues to advance to those highly complex creations that give the cosmos a new center: “Imperceptible and accidental as the position they hold may be in the history of the heavenly bodies, in the last analysis the planets are nothing less than the vital points of the universe. It is through them that the axis now runs, on them is henceforth concentrated the main effort of an evolution aiming principally at the production of large molecules.” The examination of the world by the dynamic criterion of complexity thus signifies “a complete inversion of values. A reversal of the perspective... This leads to a further passage in Teilhard de Chardin that is worth quoting in order to give at least some indication here, by means of a few fragmentary excerpts, of his general outlook. "The Universal Energy must be a Thinking Energy if it is not to be less highly evolved than the ends animated by its action. And consequently ... the attributes of cosmic value with which it is surrounded in our modern eyes do not affect in the slightest the necessity obliging us to recognize in it a transcendent form of Personality.""

"And so we can now say that the goal of worship and the goal of creation as a whole are one and the same — divinization, a world of freedom and love. But this means that the historical makes its appearance in the cosmic. The cosmos is not a kind of closed building, a stationary container in which history may by chance take place. It is itself movement, from its one beginning to its one end. In a sense, creation is history. Against the background of the modern evolutionary world view, Teilhard de Chardin depicted the cosmos as a process of ascent, a series of unions. From very simple beginnings the path leads to ever greater and more complex unities, in which multiplicity is not abolished but merged into a growing synthesis, leading to the “Noosphere”, in which spirit and its understanding embrace the whole and are blended into a kind of living organism. Invoking the epistles to the Ephesians and Colossians, Teilhard looks on Christ as the energy that strives toward the Noosphere and finally incorporates everything in its “fullness’. From here Teilhard went on to give a new meaning to Christian worship: the transubstantiated Host is the anticipation of the transformation and divinization of matter in the christological “fullness”. In his view, the Eucharist provides the movement of the cosmos with its direction; it anticipates its goal and at the same time urges it on.”"

"Hardly anyone else has tried to bring together the knowl­edge of Christ and the idea of evolution as the scientist (paleontologist) and theologian Fr. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, S.J., has done. … His fascinating vision … has represented a great hope, the hope that faith in Christ and a scientific approach to the world can be brought together. … These brief references to Teilhard cannot do justice to his efforts. The fascination which Teilhard de Chardin exer­cised for an entire generation stemmed from his radical man­ner of looking at science and Christian faith together."

"Man occupies a special place in the Cartesian scheme. He alone is endowed with mind. Descartes believed that animals did not possess one, that they were simply extremely complicated automatons. Other thinkers have rejected this point of view and proposed to endow all matter in the universe — living or inanimate — with consciousness. This "panpsychism" has been promoted by, among others, Teilhard de Chardin and, more recently by the British-American physicist Freeman Dyson, who holds that mind is present in every particle of matter."

"I am on the edge of mysteries and the veil is getting thinner and thinner."

"Dans les champs de l'observation le hasard ne favorise que les esprits préparés."

"There does not exist a category of science to which one can give the name applied science. There are sciences and the applications of science, bound together as the fruit of the tree which bears it."

"L' univers est dissymetrique..."

"I beseech you to take interest in these sacred domains so expressively called laboratories. Ask that there be more and that they be adorned for these are the temples of the future, wealth and well-being. It is here that humanity will grow, strengthen and improve. Here, humanity will learn to read progress and individual harmony in the works of nature, while humanity's own works are all too often those of barbarism, fanaticism and destruction."

"Posterity will one day laugh at the foolishness of modern materialistic philosophers. The more I study nature, the more I stand amazed at the work of the Creator. I pray while I am engaged at my work in the laboratory."

"Young men, have confidence in those powerful and safe methods, of which we do not yet know all the secrets. And, whatever your career may be, do not let yourselves become tainted by a deprecating and barren scepticism, do not let yourselves be discouraged by the sadness of certain hours which pass over nations. Live in the serene peace of laboratories and libraries. Say to yourselves first : "What have I done for my instruction?" and , as you gradually advance, "What have I done for my country?" until the time comes when you may have the immense happiness of thinking that you have contributed in some way to the progress and to the good of humanity. But, whether our efforts are or not favoured by life, let us be able to say, when we come near the great goal, "I have done what I could.""

"Science knows no country, because knowledge belongs to humanity, and is the torch which illuminates the world. Science is the highest personification of the nation because that nation will remain the first which carries the furthest the works of thought and intelligence."

"One does not ask of one who suffers: What is your country and what is your religion? One merely says: You suffer, that is enough for me..."

"Let me tell you the secret that has led me to my goal. My strength lies solely in my tenacity."

"A bottle of wine contains more philosophy than all the books in the world."

"Le premier regard de l'homme jeté sur l'univers n'y découvre que variété, diversité, multiplicité des phénomènes. Que ce regard soit illuminé par la science, — par la science qui rapproche l'homme de Dieu, — et la simplicité et l'unité brillent de toutes parts."

"La génération spontanée, je la cherche sans la découvrir depuis vingt ans. Non, je ne la juge pas impossible. Mais quoi donc vous autorise à vouloir qu'elle ait été l'origine de la vie? Vous placez la matière avant la vie et vous faites la matière existante de toute éternité. Qui vous dit que, le progrès incessant de la science n'obligera pas les savants, qui vivront dans un siècle, dans mille ans, dans dix mille ans... à affirmer que la vie a été de toute éternité et non la matière.? Vous passez de la matière à la vie parce que votre intelligence actuelle, si bornée par rapport à ce que sera l'intelligence des naturalistes futurs, vous dit qu'elle ne peut comprendre autrement les choses. Qui m'assure que dans dix mille ans on ne considérera pas que c'est de la vie qu'on croira impossible de ne pas passer à la matière? Si vous voulez être au nombre des esprits scientifiques, s, qui seuls comptent, il faut vous débarrasser des idées et des raisonnements a priori et vous en tenir aux déductions nécessaires des faits établis et ne pas accorder plus de confiance qu'il ne faut aux déductions de pures hypothèses.""

"Great problems are now being handled, keeping every thinking man in suspense; the unity or multiplicity of human races; the creation of man 1,000 years or 1,000 centuries ago; the fixity of species, or the slow and progressive transformation of one species into another; the eternity of matter; the idea of a God unnecessary: such are some of the questions that humanity discusses nowadays."

"Comprenez-vous maintenant le lien qui existe entre la question des générations spontanées et ces grands problèmes que j'ai énumérés en commençant? Mais, messieurs, dans un pareil sujet, assez de poésie comme cela, assez de fantaisie et de solutions instinctives; il est temps que la science, la vraie méthode reprenne ses droits et les exerce. Il n'y a ici ni religion, ni philosophie, ni athéisme, ni matérialisme, ni spiritualisme qui tienne. Je pourrais même ajouter : Comme savant, peu m'importe. C'est une question de fait; je l'ai abordée sans idée préconçue, aussi prêt à déclarer, si l'expérience m'en avait imposé l'aveu, qu'il existe des générations spontanées, que je suis persuadé aujourd'hui que ceux qui les affirment ont un bandeau sur les veux."

"Et par conséquent, messieurs pourrais-je dire, en vous montrant ce liquide : J’ai pris dans l’immensité de la création ma goutte d’eau, et je l’ai prise toute pleine de la gelée féconde, c’est-à-dire, pour parler le langage de la science, toute pleine des éléments appropriés au développement des êtres inférieurs, Et j’attends, et j’observe, et je l’interroge, et je lui demande de vouloir bien recommencer pour moi la primitive création ; ce serait un si beau spectacle ! Mais elle est muette ! Elle est muette depuis plusieurs années que ces expériences sont commencées. Ah ! c’est que j’ai éloigné d’elle, et que j’éloigne encore en ce moment, la seule chose qu’il n’ait pas été donné à l’homme de produire, j’ai éloigné d’elle les germes qui flottent dans l’ait" j’ai éloigné d’elle la vie, car la vie c’est le germe et le germe c’est la vie. Jamais la doctrine de la génération spontanée ne se relèvera du coup mortel que Cette simple expérience lui porte."

"No, there is now no circumstance known in which it can be affirmed that microscopic beings came into the world without germs, without parents similar to themselves. Those who affirm it have been duped by illusions, by ill-conducted experiments, spoilt by errors that they either did not perceive or did not know how to avoid."

"Maintenant, messieurs, il y aurait un beau sujet à traiter : c’est celui du rôle, dans l’économie générale de la création, de quelques-uns de ces petits êtres qui sont les agents de la fermentation, les agents de la putréfaction, de la désorganisation de tout ce qui a eu vie il la surface du globe. Ce rôle est immense, merveilleux, vraiment émouvant. Un jour peut-être me sera-t-il donné de vous exposer ici quelques-uns de ces résultats. Dieu veuille que ce soit encore en présence à une aussi brillante assemblée!"

"To prove that, until this very day, life has never been shown to man as a product of the forces that govern matter, it could be useful the spiritual doctrine which has been very neglected elsewhere, but always finds at least a glorious refuge in your groups. Perhaps you know that in this difficult question concerning the origin of the infinitesimal, I will have brought experimental rigor that has grown weary of contradiction. Referring to the merit, however, we have inherited severe rules of the method from the great experimenters: Galileo, Pascal, Newton and their followers for two centuries."

"The human spirit, driven by an invincible force, will never cease to ask: What is beyond? Does he want to stop either in time or in space? Since the point at which he has reigned is only a finite magnitude, greater only than all those who have preceded him, he has scarcely begun to think of it as the implacable question and always without being able to silence his curiosity. There is nothing to answer: there are spaces, times or magnitudes without limits. No one understands these words."

"He who proclaims the existence of the Infinite, and none can avoid it — accumulates in that affirmation more of the supernatural than is to be found in all the miracles of all the religions; for the notion of the Infinite presents that double character that forces itself upon us and yet is incomprehensible. When this notion seizes upon our understanding we can but kneel ... I see everywhere the inevitable expression of the Infinite in the world; through it the supernatural is at the bottom of every heart. The idea of God is a form of the idea of the Infinite. As long as the mystery of the infinite weighs on human thought, temples will be erected for the worship of the Infinite, whether God is called Brahma, Allah, Jehovah, or Jesus; and on the pavement of these temples, men will be seen kneeling, prostrated, annihilated by the thought of the Infinite."

"Où sont les vraies sources de la dignité humaine, de la liberté et de la démocratie moderne, sinon dans la notion de l’infini devant laquelle tous les hommes sont égaux?"

"Les Grecs avaient compris la mystérieuse puissance de ce dessous de choses. Ce sont eux qui nous ont légué un des plus beaux mots de notre langue, le mot enthousiasme. — Εν Θεος. — Un Dieu intérieur."

"La grandeur des actions humaines se mesure à l’inspiration qui les fait naître. Heureux celui qui porte en soi un Dieu, un idéal de la beauté et qui lui obéit : idéal de l’art, idéal de la science, idéal de la patrie, idéal des vertus de l’Évangile! Ce sont là les sources vives des grandes pensées et des grandes actions. Toutes s’éclairent des reflets de l’infini."

"If perchance you should falter during the journey, a hand would be there to support you. If that should be wanting, God, who alone could take that hand from you, would Himself accomplish its work."

"Though one discovery always surpasses another, and though the chemical and physical knowledge accumulated since his time has gone beyond all Lavoisier's dreams, his work, like that of Newton and a few other rare spirits, will remain ever young. Certain details will age, as do the fashions of another time, but the foundation, the method, constitute one of those great aspects of the human mind, the majesty of which is only increased by years."

"God grant that by my persevering labours I may bring a little stone to the frail and ill-assured edifice of our knowledge of those deep mysteries of Life and Death where all our intellects have so lamentably failed."

"I confess frankly, however, that I am not competent on the question of our philosophical schools. Of M. Comte I have only read a few absurd passages; of M. Littré I only know the beautiful pages you were inspired to write by his rare knowledge and some of his domestic virtues. My philosophy is of the heart and not of the mind, and I give myself up, for instance, to those feelings about eternity which come naturally at the bedside of a cherished child drawing its last breath. At those supreme moments, there is something in the depths of our souls which tells us that the world may be more than a mere combination of phenomena proper to a mechanical equilibrium brought out of the chaos of the elements simply through the gradual action of the forces of matter."

"You say that, in the present state of science, it is wiser to have no opinion: well, I have an opinion, not a sentimental one, but a rational one, having acquired a right to it by twenty years of assiduous labour, and it would be wise in every impartial mind to share it. My opinion — nay more, my conviction — is that, in the present state of science, as you rightly say, spontaneous generation is a chimera ; and it would be impossible for you to contradict me, for my experiments all stand forth to prove that spontaneous generation is a chimera. What is then your judgment on my experiments? Have I not a hundred times placed organic matter in contact with pure air in the best conditions for it to produce life spontaneously? Have I not practised on these organic materia which are most favourable, according to all accounts, to the genesis of spontaneity, such as blood, urine, and grape juice? How is it that you do not see the essential difference between my opponents and myself? Not only have I contradicted, proof in hand, every one of their assertions, while they have never dared to seriously contradict one of mine, but, for them, every cause of error benefits their opinion. For me, affirming as I do that there are no spontaneous fermentations, I am bound to eliminate every cause of error, every perturbing influence, I can maintain my results only by means of most irreproachable experiments; their opinions, on the contrary, profit by every insufficient experiment and that is where they find their support."

"You bring me the deepest joy that can be felt by a man whose invincible belief is that Science and Peace will triumph over Ignorance and War, that nations will unite, not to destroy, but to build, and that the future will belong to those who will have done most for suffering humanity."

"The more I know, the more nearly is my faith that of the Breton peasant. Could I but know all I would have the faith of a Breton peasant woman."

"When I approach a child, he inspires in me two sentiments; tenderness for what he is, and respect for what he may become."

"Religion has no more place in science than science has in religion."

"It is surmounting difficulties that makes heroes."

"A little science estranges men from God, but much science leads them back to Him."

"The microbe is nothing. The terrain is everything."

"In September 1873 the Germans, who had been occupying sixteen départements, finally left the country. Showing remarkable resilience, the French had discharged the entire five-billion-franc indemnity in a little more than two years. These reparations had been paid so promptly thanks largely to the profits from a booming wine industry, since Louis Pasteur had discovered that pasteurizing wine — briefly heating it to fifty-five degrees Celsius to kill off the microscopic organisms — made it last longer and travel better. The result was an increase in exports to countries such as Britain and America. French art as well as French wine looked like it was beginning to travel well."

"Pasteur originally conceived the idea of germs and of destroying them. Although this started as a personal thing, it has mushroomed into DDT, killing beetles and worms, resulting in food contamination, much sickness, and trouble. Although he is regarded as hero by modern medicine, Pasteur will be treated in much the same way as a warmonger when he is judged in the spiritual world."

"Pasteur was far ahead of his time. Although the structural theory of Kekulé had not yet been proposed, Pasteur explained his results by speaking of the molecules themselves, saying, “There is no doubt that [in the dextro tartaric acid] there exists an asymmetric arrangement having a nonsuperimposable image. It is no less certain that the atoms of the levo acid have precisely the inverse asymmetric arrangement.” Pasteur's vision was extraordinary, for it was not until 25 years later that his ideas regarding the asymmetric carbon atom were confirmed. Today, we would describe Pasteur's work by saying that he had discovered enantiomers. Enantiomers, also called optical isomers, have identical physical properties, such as melting point and boiling point, but differ in the direction in which their solutions rotate plane-polarized light."

"See — I have taken England with both my hands."

"Most valiant of men, what availed the power of the Frank king, with all his people, from Lorraine to Spain, against Hastings, my predecessor? What he wanted of the territory of France he appropriated to himself; what he chose, only, was left to the king; what he had, he held during his pleasure; when he was satisfied, he relinquished it, and looked for something better. Did not Rollo, my ancestor, the founder of our nation, with your progenitors, conquer at Paris the king of the Franks in the heart of his dominions; nor could he obtain any respite until he humbly offered possession of the country which from you is called Normandy, with the hand of his daughter? Did not your fathers take prisoner the king of the French, and detain him at Rouen till he restored Normandy to your Duke Richard, then a boy; with this stipulation, that in every conference between the King of France and the Duke of Normandy, the duke should have his sword by his side, while the king should not be allowed so much as a dagger? This concession your fathers compelled the great king to submit to, as binding for ever."

"Ah! let any one of the English whom our predecessors, both Danes and Norwegians, have defeated in a hundred battles, come forth and show that the race of Rollo ever suffered a defeat from his time until now, and I will submit and retreat. Is it not shameful, then, that a people accustomed to be conquered, a people ignorant of the art of war, a people not even in possession of arrows, should make a show of being arrayed in order of battle against you, most valiant? Is it not a shame that this King Harold, perjured as he was in your presence, should dare to show his face to you? It is a wonder to me that you have been allowed to see those who by a horrible crime beheaded your relations and Alfred my kinsman, and that their own accursed heads are still on their shoulders. Raise, then, your standards, my brave men, and set no bounds to your merited rage. Let the lightning of your glory flash, and the thunders of your onset be heard from east to west, and be the avengers of the noble blood which has been spilled."

"I attacked the English of the Northern Shires like a lion. I ordered their houses and corn, with all their belongings, to be burnt without exception and large herds of cattle and beasts of burden to be destroyed wherever they were found. It was there I took revenge on masses of people by subjecting them to a cruel famine; and by doing so — alas!— I became the murderer of many thousands of that fine race."

"He must be judged by his acts, but his acts are sufficiently illuminating. They leave no doubt of his greatness, but they reveal also a man who was harsh and unlovable – perhaps even personally repellent. Most of his life was spent in war, and war brought out what was brutal in this burly warrior whose physical strength (until diminished by corpulence) was exceptional, and who may have looked something like Henry VIII of England. His savagery in war is well attested."

"As a warrior, William was (perhaps inevitably) stained with blood. As a ruler, his avarice was notorious, and his taxation savage. He needed money for his government, and particularly for the numerous mercenaries he employed. The ruthlessness with which he extracted money from England must be set against the good administration he provided... Strong in rule, he was not a tyrant. Contemporaries found him a man to fear, but also a man to respect."

"He was harsh and rapacious, personally pious, courageous in adversity, and indomitably tenacious of purpose. He could suit his policy to opportunity; but his will was inflexible, and his energy was untiring."

"It would, in truth, be difficult to deny to William the Conqueror a place among the greatest monarchs of the Middle Ages. He stands four-square, a dominant figure against the background of his own fascinating and tumultuous age. As a warrior he was widely renowned, and probably justly, for...his patience, his organization and his generalship were surely of the highest order. But it is above all for his constructive statesmanship that he commands attention; and here his achievement must appear all the more remarkable when it is recalled that his ceaseless preoccupation with the problems of government was coupled with ceaseless campaigning... To England he gave a new aristocracy and a reconstituted church. At the same time, he was concerned to respect the traditions of the country he conquered, and he revitalized many of its ancient institutions. He made his own contribution to the highly individual character of medieval England, and Anglo-Norman history in the eleventh century cannot be appraised without reference to his characteristic acts."

"As a mere constellation of talent in different fields Anselm, Gregory VII and William the Conqueror were the greatest men in Europe during this period... William and Gregory were men of action of a kind rare at any time, but almost unknown in the Middle Ages: they were creators who dealt intuitively with confused situations, having little in precedent or business routine or learned construction to guide them. Gregory had an energy of purpose and clarity of vision in practical affairs for which no parallel can be found in these centuries. William had an undaunted mastery of the problems of the secular world—that is to say, of other men's wills—in both fighting and ruling, unapproached in creative power by any other medieval ruler after Charlemagne."

"Rex Angliæ modo in Hybernia, modo in Anglia, modo in Normannia, volare potius judicandus est quam vel equum vel navem conscendere."

"All great men are gifted with intuition. They know without reasoning or analysis, what they need to know."

"[M]en cannot follow modern civilization along its present course, because they are degenerating. They have been fascinated by the beauty of the sciences of inert matter. They have not understood that their body and consciousness are subjected to natural laws, more obscure than, but as inexorable as, the laws of the sidereal world. Neither have they understood that they cannot transgress these laws without being punished. They must, therefore, learn the necessary relations of the cosmic universe, of their fellow men, and of their inner selves, and also those of their tissues and their mind. Indeed, man stands above all things. Should he degenerate, the beauty of civilization, and even the grandeur of the physical universe, would vanish. ... Humanity's attention must turn from the machines of the world of inanimate matter to the body and the soul of man, to the organic and mental processes which have created the machines and the universe of Newton and Einstein"

"We must single out the children who are endowed with high potentialities, and develop them as completely as possible. And in this manner give to the nation a non-hereditary aristocracy. Such children may be found in all classes of society, although distinguished men appear more frequently in distinguished families than in others. The descendants of the founders of American civilization may still possess the ancestral qualities. These qualities are generally hidden under the cloak of degeneration. But this degeneration is often superficial. It comes chiefly from education, idleness, lack of responsibility and moral discipline. The sons of very rich men, like those of criminals, should be removed while still infants from their natural surroundings. Thus separated from their family, they could manifest their hereditary strength. In the aristocratic families of Europe there are also individuals of great vitality. The issue of the Crusaders is by no means extinct. The laws of genetics indicate the probability that the legendary audacity and love of adventure can appear again in the lineage of the feudal lords. It is possible also that the offspring of the great criminals who had imagination, courage, and judgment, of the heroes of the French or Russian Revolutions, of the high-handed business men who live among us, might be excellent building stones for an enterprising minority. As we know, criminality is not hereditary if not united with feeble-mindedness or other mental or cerebral defects. High potentialities are rarely encountered in the sons of honest, intelligent, hard-working men who have had ill luck in their careers, who have failed in business or have muddled along all their lives in inferior positions. Or among peasants living on the same spot for centuries. However, from such people sometimes spring artists, poets, adventurers, saints. A brilliantly gifted and well-known New York family came from peasants who cultivated their farm in the south of France from the time of Charlemagne to that of Napoleon."

"We have mentioned that natural selection has not played its part for a long while. That many inferior individuals have been conserved through the efforts of hygiene and medicine. But we cannot prevent the reproduction of the weak when they are neither insane nor criminal. Or destroy sickly or defective children as we do the weaklings in a litter of puppies. The only way to obviate the disastrous predominance of the weak is to develop the strong. Our efforts to render normal the unfit are evidently useless. We should, then, turn our attention toward promoting the optimum growth of the fit. By making the strong still stronger, we could effectively help the weak; For the herd always profits by the ideas and inventions of the elite. Instead of leveling organic and mental inequalities, we should amplify them and construct greater men."

"The progress of the strong depends on the conditions of their development and the possibility left to parents of transmitting to their offspring the qualities which they have acquired in the course of their existence. Modern society must, therefore, allow to all a certain stability of life, a home, a garden, some friends. Children must be reared in contact with things which are the expression of the mind of their parents. It is imperative to stop the transformation of the farmer, the artisan, the artist, the professor, and the man of science into manual or intellectual proletarians, possessing nothing but their hands or their brains. The development of this proletariat will be the everlasting shame of industrial civilization. It has contributed to the disappearance of the family as a social unit, and to the weakening of intelligence and moral sense. It is destroying the remains of culture. All forms of the proletariat must be suppressed. Each individual should have the security and the stability required for the foundation of a family. Marriage must cease being only a temporary union. The union of man and woman, like that of the higher anthropoids, ought to last at least until the young have no further need of protection. The laws relating to education, and especially to that of girls, to marriage, and divorce should, above all, take into account the interest of children. Women should receive a higher education, not in order to become doctors, lawyers, or professors, but to rear their offspring to be valuable human beings. The free practice of eugenics could lead not only to the development of stronger individuals, but also of strains endowed with more endurance, intelligence, and courage. These strains should constitute an aristocracy, from which great men would probably appear. Modern society must promote, by all possible means, the formation of better human stock. No financial or moral rewards should be too great for those who, through the wisdom of their marriage, would engender geniuses. The complexity of our civilization is immense. No one can master all its mechanisms. However, these mechanisms have to be mastered. There is need today of men of larger mental and moral size, capable of accomplishing such a task. The establishment of a hereditary biological aristocracy through voluntary eugenics would be an important step toward the solution of our present problems."

"L'intelligence est presque inutile à celui qui ne possède qu'elle."

"The German government has taken energetic measures against the propagation of the defective, the mentally diseased, and the criminal. The ideal solution would be the suppression of each of these individuals as soon as he has proven himself to be dangerous."

"The existence of finality within the organism is undeniable. Each part seems to know the present and future needs of the whole, and acts accordingly. The significance of time and space is not the same for our tissues as for our mind. The body perceives the remote as well as the near, the future as well as the present."

"The democratic creed does not take account of the constitution of our body and of our consciousness. It does not apply to the concrete fact which the individual is. Indeed, human beings are equal. But individuals are not. The equality of their right is an illusion. The feeble-minded and the man of genius should not be equal before the law. The stupid, the unintelligent, those who are dispersed, incapable of attention, of effort, have no right to a higher education. It is absurd to give them the same electoral power as the fully developed individuals. Sexes are not equal. To disregard all their inequalities is dangerous. The democratic principle has contributed to the collapse of civilization in opposing the development of an elite."

"Man must remake himself. And he cannot remake himself without suffering. For he is both the marble and the sculptor."

"La vie est une tragédie pour celui qui sent, et une comédie pour celui qui pense."

"Avoid lawsuits beyond all things; they pervert your conscience, impair your health and dissipate your property."

"Of the sixteen chapters which compose it, there are fifteen wholly employed in detecting the fallacy and ridicule to be found in the objects of human passions and inclinations, and in demolishing such obstacles as at first weaken, and afterwards extinguish, any knowledge of God in mankind ; Therefore, these chapters are merely preparatory to the sixteenth and last, wherein atheism is attacked, and perhaps routed, wherein the proofs of a God, such at least as weak man is capable of receiving, are produced ; wherein the providence of God is defended against the insults and complaints of free-thinkers."

"A preacher must have some intelligence to charm the people by his florid style, by his exhilarating system of morality, by the repetition of his figures of speech, his brilliant remarks and vivid descriptions ; but, after all, he has not too much of it, for if he possessed some of the right quality he would neglect these extraneous ornaments, unworthy of the Gospel, and preach naturally, forcibly, and like a Christian."

"The heroic virtues of some great men have been the cause of the corruption of eloquence, or have, at least, enervated the style of most preachers. Instead of joining with the people in rendering thanks to Heaven for the extraordinary gifts it has bestowed on those great men, these very preachers have enrolled themselves among authors and poets, and become panegyrists ; they have even uttered more extravagant praises than are found in dedications, verses, or prologues ; they have turned the Word of God into a whole warp of praises, which, though well deserved, are out of place, bestowed from selfish motives, not required, and ill-suited to their calling. It is fortunate indeed, if, while they are celebrating their heroes in the sanctuary, they even mention the name of that God or of that religion they ought to preach. Some have wished to preach the Gospel, which is for all men, only to one person, and have been so disconcerted when by accident that person was kept away, that they were unable to pronounce a Christian discourse before an assembly of Christian men, because it was not prepared for them, so that other orators have been obliged to take their places, who had only sufficient leisure to praise God in an extemporary exhortation.!"

"What can be more discouraging to a man than to doubt if his soul be material, like a stone or a reptile, and subject to corruption like the vilest creatures ? And does it not prove much more strength of mind and grandeur to be able to conceive the idea of a Being superior to all other beings, by whom and for whom all things were made; of a Being absolutely perfect and pure, without beginning or end, of whom our soul is the image, and of whom, if I may say so, it is a part, because it is spiritual and immortal?"

"I call those men worldly, earthly, or coarse, whose hearts and minds are wholly fixed on this earth, that small part of the universe they are placed in; who value and love nothing beyond it; whose minds are as cramped as that narrow spot of ground they call their estate, of which the extent is measured, the acres are numbered, and the limits well known. I am not astonished that men who lean, as it were, on an atom, should stumble at the smallest efforts they make for discovering the truth; that, being so short-sighted, they do not reach beyond the heavens and the stars, to contemplate God Himself; that, not being able to perceive the excellency of what is spiritual, or the dignity of the soul, they should be still less sensible of the difficulty of satisfying it; how very inferior the entire world is in comparison to it; how necessary is to it an all-perfect Being, which is God; and how absolutely it needs a religion to find out that God, and to be assured of His reality. I can easily understand that incredulity or indifference are but natural to such men, that they make use of God and religion only as a piece of policy, as far as they may be conducive to the order and decorum of this world, the only thing in their opinion worth thinking of."

"All kinds of music are not suited to praise God and to be heard in the sanctuary; all methods of philosophy are not fit for discoursing worthily of God, His power, the principles of His operations, and His mysteries."

"A man in health questions whether there is a God, and he also doubts whether it be a sin to have intercourse with a woman, who is at liberty to refuse; but when he falls ill, or when his mistress is with child, she is discarded, and he believes in God."

"Tout est dit, et l'on vient trop tard depuis plus de sept mille ans qu'il y a des hommes qui pensent."

"C'est un métier que de faire un livre, comme de faire une pendule: il faut plus que de l'esprit pour être auteur."

"Il y a de certaines choses dont la médiocrité est insupportable: la poésie, la musique, la peinture, le discours public. Quel supplice que celui d'entendre déclamer pompeusement un froid discours, ou prononcer de médiocres vers avec toute l'emphase d'un mauvais poète!"

"Amas d'épithètes, mauvaises louanges: ce sont les faits qui louent, et la manière de les raconter."

"L'on voit bien que l'Opéra est l'ébauche d'un grand spectacle; il en donne l'idée."

"La critique souvent n'est pas une science; c'est un métier, où il faut plus de santé que d'esprit, plus de travail que de capacité, plus d'habitude que de génie. Si elle vient d'un homme qui ait moins de discernement que de lecture, et qu'elle s'exerce sur de certains chapitres, elle corrompt et les lecteurs et l'écrivain."

"Horace ou Despréaux l'a dit avant vous.—Je le crois sur votre parole; mais je l'ai dit comme mien. Ne puis-je pas penser après eux une chose vraie, et que d'autres encore penseront après moi?"

"Il ne manque cependant à l'oisiveté du sage qu'un meilleur nom, et que méditer, parler, lire, et être tranquille s'appelât travailler."

"Un extérieur simple est l'habit des hommes vulgaires, il est taillé pour eux et sur leur mesure; mais c'est une parure pour ceux qui ont rempli leur vie de grandes actions: je les compare à une beauté négligée, mais plus piquante."

"S'il est heureux d'avoir de la naissance, il ne l'est pas moins d'être tel qu'on ne s'informe plus si vous en avez."

"Il apparaît de temps en temps sur la surface de la terre des hommes rares, exquis, qui brillent par leur vertu, et dont les qualités éminentes jettent un éclat prodigieux. Semblables à ces étoiles extraordinaires dont on ignore les causes, et dont on sait encore moins ce qu'elles deviennent après avoir disparu, ils n'ont ni aïeuls, ni descendants: ils composent seuls toute leur race."

"[I]l semble que le mariage met tout le monde dans son ordre."

"Il n'y a guère d'homme si accompli et si nécessaire aux siens, qu'il n'ait de quoi se faire moins regretter."

"Chassez un chien du fauteuil du Roi, il grimpe à la chaire du prédicateur; il regarde le monde indifféremment, sans embarras, sans pudeur; il n'a pas, non plus que le sot, de quoi rougir."

"Ménippe est l'oiseau paré de divers plumages qui ne sont pas à lui. Il ne parle pas, il ne sent pas; il répète des sentiments et des discours, se sert même si naturellement de l'esprit des autres qu'il y est le premier trompé, et qu'il croit souvent dire son goût ou expliquer sa pensée, lorsqu'il n'est que l'écho de quelqu'un qu'il vient de quitter."

"La fausse grandeur est farouche et inaccessible: comme elle sent son faible, elle se cache, ou du moins ne se montre pas de front, et ne se fait voir qu'autant qu'il faut pour imposer et ne paraître point ce qu'elle est, je veux dire une vraie petitesse. La véritable grandeur est libre, douce, familière, populaire; elle se laisse toucher et manier, elle ne perd rien à être vue de près; plus on la connaît, plus on l'admire."

"Le sage guérit de l'ambition par l'ambition même; il tend à de si grandes choses, qu'il ne peut se borner à ce qu'on appelle des trésors, des postes, la fortune et la faveur."

"Celui-là est bon qui fait du bien aux autres; s'il souffre pour le bien qu'il fait, il est très bon; s'il souffre de ceux à qui il a fait ce bien, il a une si grande bonté qu'elle ne peut être augmentée que dans le cas où ses souffrances viendraient à croître; et s'il en meurt, sa vertu ne saurait aller plus loin: elle est héroïque, elle est parfaite."

"Les femmes sont extrêmes: elles sont meilleures ou pires que les hommes."

"Les douleurs muettes et stupides sont hors d'usage: on pleure, on récite, on répète, on est si touchée de la mort de son mari, qu'on n'en oublie pas la moindre circonstance."

"Le temps, qui fortifie les amitiés, affaiblit l'amour."

"L'amour qui naît subitement est le plus long à guérir."

"Le commencement et le déclin de l'amour se font sentir par l'embarras où l'on est de se trouver seuls."

"L'on veut faire tout le bonheur, ou si cela ne se peut ainsi, tout le malheur de ce qu'on aime."

"Regretter ce que l'on aime est un bien, en comparaison de vivre avec ce que l'on hait."

"La libéralité consiste moins à donner beaucoup qu'à donner à propos."

"S'il est vrai que la pitié ou la compassion soit un retour vers nous-mêmes qui nous met en la place des malheureux, pourquoi tirent-ils de nous si peu de soulagement dans leurs misères?"

"If it be true that in showing pity and compassion we think of ourselves, because we fear to be one day or another in the same circumstances as those unfortunate people for whom we feel, why are the latter so sparingly relieved by us of their condition?"

"Il faut rire avant que d'être heureux, de peur de mourir sans avoir ri."

"A Man must be very inert to have no character at all."

"A fool is always troublesome, a man of sense perceives when he pleases or is tiresome ; he goes away the very minute before it might have been thought he stayed too long."

"Mischievous wags are a kind of insects which are in everybody's way and plentiful in all countries. Real wit is rarely to be met with, and even if it be innate in a man, it must be very difficult to maintain reputation for it during any length of time; for, commonly, he that makes us laugh does not stand high in our estimation."

"There are a great many obscene minds, yet more railing and satirical, but very few fastidious ones. A man must have good manners, be very polite, and even have a great deal of originality to be able to jest gracefully and be felicitous in his remarks about trifles; to jest in such a manner and to make something out of nothing is to create."

"Some men speak one moment before they think; others tediously study everything they say, and in conversation bore us as painfully as was the travail of their mind; they are, as it were, made up of phrases and quaint expressions, whilst their gestures are as affected as their behaviour. They call themselves "purists," and do not venture to say the most trifling word not in use, however expressive it may be. Nothing comes from them worth remembering, nothing is spontaneous and unrestrained; they speak correctly, but they are very tiresome."

"L'esprit de la conversation consiste bien moins à en montrer beaucoup qu'à en faire trouver aux autres: celui qui sort de votre entretien content de soi et de son esprit, l'est de vous parfaitement. Les hommes n'aiment point à vous admirer, ils veulent plaire; ils cherchent moins à être instruits, et même réjouis, qu'à être goûtés et applaudis."

"It is a sad thing when men have neither enough intelligence to speak well, nor enough sense to hold their tongues; this is the root of all impertinence."

"To speak and to offend is with some people but one and the same thing; they are biting and bitter; their words are steeped in gall and wormwood; sneers as well as insolent and insulting words flow from their lips. It had been well for them had they been born mute or stupid; the little vivacity and intelligence they have prejudices them more than dullness does others; they are not always satisfied with giving sharp answers, they often attack arrogantly those who are present, and damage the reputation of those who are absent; they butt all round like rams — for rams, of course, must use their horns. We therefore do not expect, by our sketch of them, to change such coarse, restless, and stubborn individuals. The best thing a man can do is to take to his heels as soon as he perceives them, without even turning round to look behind him."

"Rire des gens d'esprit, c'est le privilège des sots."

"Profound ignorance makes a man dogmatical; he who knows nothing thinks he can teach others what he just now has learned himself; whilst he who knows a great deal can scarcely imagine any one should be unacquainted with what he says, and, therefore, speaks with more indifference."

"À mesure que la faveur et les grands biens se retirent d'un homme, ils laissent voir en lui le ridicule qu'ils couvraient, et qui y était sans que personne s'en aperçût."

"N'envions point à une sorte de gens leurs grandes richesses; ils les ont à titre onéreux, et qui ne nous accommoderait point: ils ont mis leur repos, leur santé, leur honneur et leur conscience pour les avoir; cela est trop cher, et il n'y a rien à gagner à un tel marché."

"Rien ne fait mieux comprendre le peu de chose que Dieu croit donner aux hommes, en leur abandonnant les richesses, l'argent, les grands établissements et les autres biens, que la dispensation qu'il en fait, et le genre d'hommes qui en sont le mieux pourvus."

"S'il est vrai que l'on soit pauvre par toutes les choses que l'on désire, l'ambitieux et l'avare languissent dans une extrême pauvreté."

"Il n'y a au monde que deux manières de s'élever, ou par sa propre industrie, ou par l'imbécillité des autres."

"Il y a des âmes sales, pétries de boue et d’ordure, éprises du gain et de l’intérêt, comme les belles âmes le sont de la gloire et de la vertu; capables d’une seule volupté, qui est celle d’acquérir ou de ne point perdre."

"La ville est partagée en diverses sociétés, qui sont comme autant de petites républiques, qui ont leurs lois, leurs usages, leur jargon, et leurs mots pour rire. Tant que cet assemblage est dans sa force, et que l'entêtement subsiste, l'on ne trouve rien de bien dit ou de bien fait que ce qui part des siens, et l'on est incapable de goûter ce qui vient d'ailleurs: cela va jusques au mépris pour les gens qui ne sont pas initiés dans leurs mystères."

"[L]e plus fort et le plus pénible est de donner; que coûte-t-il d'y ajouter un sourire?"

"L'on doit se taire sur les puissants: il y a presque toujours de la flatterie à en dire du bien; il y a du péril à en dire du mal pendant qu'ils vivent, et de la lâcheté quand ils sont morts."

"Il n'y a pour l'homme que trois événements: naître, vivre et mourir. Il ne se sent pas naître, il souffre à mourir, et il oublie de vivre."

"Ainsi les postes éminents rendent les grands hommes encore plus grands, et les petits beaucoup plus petits."

"La plupart des hommes emploient la meilleure partie de leur vie à rendre l'autre misérable."

"Most men make use of the first part of their life to render the last part miserable."

"L'une des marques de la médiocrité de l'esprit est de toujours conter."

"One mark of a second-rate mind is to be always telling stories."

"Entre le bon sens et le bon goût il y a la différence de la cause à son effet."

"Quel avantage n'a pas un discours prononcé sur un ouvrage qui est écrit! Les hommes sont les dupes de l'action et de la parole, comme de tout l'appareil de l'auditoire. Pour peu de prévention qu'ils aient en faveur de celui qui parle, ils l'admirent, et cherchent ensuite à le comprendre: avant qu'il ait commencé, ils s'écrient qu'il va bien faire; ils s'endorment bientôt, et le discours fini, ils se réveillent pour dire qu'il a bien fait. On se passionne moins pour un auteur: son ouvrage est lu dans le loisir de la campagne, ou dans le silence du cabinet; il n'y a point de rendez-vous publics pour lui applaudir. ... On lit son livre, quelque excellent qu'il soit, dans l'esprit de le trouver médiocre; on le feuillette, on le discute, on le confronte; ce ne sont pas des sons qui se perdent en l'air et qui s'oublient; ce qui est imprimé demeure imprimé."

"La Bruyère is not a speculative moralist, but an observer of the manners of men, or, as he likes to call himself, a philosopher, and above all a Christian philosopher."

"Shortly afterwards the public lost a writer of genius renowned for his style and knowledge of humanity. I speak of La Bruyère, who died of apoplexy at Versailles, after excelling Theophrastes in his own manner, by portraying quite inimitably the men of our time in his Charactèrs. He was a very decent sort of man and excellent company, simple, not at all the pedant, and wholly sincere. I knew him well enough to regret both his death and the books which his age and health had led one to expect from him."

"The Characters of La Bruyère may be regarded as a production of a unique kind. No examples of such a work are to be found in the classics any more than of Télèmaque. The public were struck by a style at once rapid, terse and vigorous, by picturesque expressions, in a word, by a totally new use of the language which did not, however, break its rules; and the numerous allusions contained in the work crowned its success. When La Bruyère showed the manuscript of his work to M. de Malezieu, the latter said to him: "Here is something which will bring you many readers and many enemies." When the generation that was attacked in this book had passed away, its reputation declined. Nevertheless, as there are some books which belong to all time and to all countries, it is probable that it will never be forgotten."

"Though sincerity and confidence have many points of resemblance, they have yet many points of difference. Sincerity is an openness of heart, which shows us what we are, a love of truth, a dislike to deception, a wish to compensate our faults and to lessen them by the merit of confessing them."

"Confidence always pleases those who receive it. It is a tribute we pay to their merit, a deposit we commit to their trust, a pledge which gives them a claim upon us, a kind of dependence to which we voluntarily submit. I do not wish from what I have said to depreciate confidence, so necessary to man."

"We should make it a rule never to have half confidences. They always embarrass those who give them, and dissatisfy those who receive them. They shed an uncertain light on what we want hidden, increase curiosity, entitling the recipients to know more, giving them leave to consider themselves free to talk of what they have guessed. It is far safer and more honest to tell nothing than to be silent when we have begun to tell."

"Although all the qualities of mind may be united in a great genius, yet there are some which are special and peculiar to him; his views are unlimited; he always acts uniformly and with the same activity; he sees distant objects as if present; he comprehends and grasps the greatest, sees and notices the smallest matters; his thoughts are elevated, broad, just and intelligible. Nothing escapes his observation, and he often finds truth in spite of the obscurity that hides her from others. A lofty mind always thinks nobly, it easily creates vivid, agreeable, and natural fancies, places them in their best light, clothes them with all appropriate adornments, studies others' tastes, and clears away from its own thoughts all that is useless and disagreeable."

"Satire is at once the most agreeable and most dangerous of mental qualities. It always pleases when it is refined, but we always fear those who use it too much, yet satire should be allowed when unmixed with spite, and when the person satirised can join in the satire. It is unfortunate to have a satirical turn without affecting to be pleased or without loving to jest."

"Raillery is a kind of mirth which takes possession of the imagination, and shows every object in an absurd light; wit combines more or less softness or harshness."

"There is a difference between an ardent and a brilliant mind, a fiery spirit travels further and faster, while a brilliant mind is sparkling, attractive, accurate."

"Though the gifts of the mind are infinite, they can, it seems to me, be thus classified. There are some so beautiful that everyone can see and feel their beauty. There are some lovely, it is true, but which are wearisome. There are some which are lovely, which all the world admire, but without knowing why. There are some so refined and delicate that few are capable even of remarking all their beauties. There are others which, though imperfect, yet are produced with such skill, and sustained and managed with such sense and grace, that they even deserve to be admired."

"The word taste has different meanings, which it is easy to mistake. There is a difference between the taste which in certain objects has an attraction for us, and the taste that makes us understand and distinguish the qualities we judge by."

"Some have a species of instinct (the source of which they are ignorant of), and decide all questions that come before them by its aid, and always decide rightly. These follow their taste more than their intelligence, because they do not permit their temper and self-love to prevail over their natural discernment. All they do is in harmony, all is in the same spirit. This harmony makes them decide correctly on matters, and form a correct estimate of their value. But speaking generally there are few who have a taste fixed and independent of that of their friends, they follow example and fashion which generally form the standard of taste."

"The reason why so few persons are agreeable in conversation is that each thinks more of what he desires to say, than of what the others say, and that we make bad listeners when we want to speak. Yet it is necessary to listen to those who talk, we should give them the time they want, and let them say even senseless things; never contradict or interrupt them; on the contrary, we should enter into their mind and taste, illustrate their meaning, praise anything they say that deserves praise, and let them see we praise more from our choice than from agreement with them. To please others we should talk on subjects they like and that interest them, avoid disputes upon indifferent matters, seldom ask questions, and never let them see that we pretend to be better informed than they are."

"We should never say anything with an air of authority, nor show any superiority of mind. We should avoid far-fetched expressions, expressions hard or forced, and never let the words be grander than the matter."

"We are sure to displease when we speak too long and too often of one subject, and when we try to turn the conversation upon subjects that we think more instructive than others, we should enter indifferently upon every subject that is agreeable to others, stopping where they wish, and avoiding all they do not agree with."

"We should observe the place, the occasion, the temper in which we find the person who listens to us, for if there is much art in speaking to the purpose, there is no less in knowing when to be silent. There is an eloquent silence which serves to approve or to condemn, there is a silence of discretion and of respect. In a word, there is a tone, an air, a manner, which renders everything in conversation agreeable or disagreeable, refined or vulgar."

"There is an air which belongs to the figure and talents of each individual; we always lose it when we abandon it to assume another. We should try to find out what air is natural to us and never abandon it, but make it as perfect as we can. This is the reason that the majority of children please. It is because they are wrapt up in the air and manner nature has given them, and are ignorant of any other. They are changed and corrupted when they quit infancy, they think they should imitate what they see, and they are not altogether able to imitate it. In this imitation there is always something of falsity and uncertainty. They have nothing settled in their manner and opinions. Instead of being in reality what they want to appear, they seek to appear what they are not."

"All men want to be different, and to be greater than they are; they seek for an air other than their own, and a mind different from what they possess; they take their style and manner at chance. They make experiments upon themselves without considering that what suits one person will not suit everyone, that there is no universal rule for taste or manners, and that there are no good copies."

"Few men, nevertheless, can have unison in many matters without being a copy of each other, if each follow his natural turn of mind. But in general a person will not wholly follow it. He loves to imitate. We often imitate the same person without perceiving it, and we neglect our own good qualities for the good qualities of others, which generally do not suit us."

"But, yet acquired qualities should always have a certain agreement and a certain union with our own natural qualities, which they imperceptibly extend and increase."

"We should not speak of all subjects in one tone and in the same manner. We do not march at the head of a regiment as we walk on a promenade; and we should use the same style in which we should naturally speak of different things in the same way, with the same difference as we should walk, but always naturally, and as is suitable, either at the head of a regiment or on a promenade.="

"Thousands of people with good qualities are displeasing; thousands pleasing with far less abilities, and why? Because the first wish to appear to be what they are not, the second are what they appear. Some of the advantages or disadvantages that we have received from nature please in proportion as we know the air, the style, the manner, the sentiments that coincide with our condition and our appearance, and displease in the proportion they are removed from that point."

"Nos vertus ne sont, le plus souvent, que de vices déguisés."

"Ce que nous prenons pour des vertus n'est souvent qu'un assemblage de diverses actions et de divers intérêts, que la fortune ou notre industrie savent arranger; et ce n'est pas toujours par valeur et par chasteté que les hommes sont vaillants, et que les femmes sont chastes."

"L'amour-propre est le plus grand de tous les flatteurs."

"La passion fait souvent un fou du plus habile homme, et rend souvent les plus sots habiles."

"Les passions sont les seuls orateurs qui persuadent toujours. Elles sont comme un art de la nature dont les règles sont infaillibles; et l'homme le plus simple qui a de la passion persuade mieux que le plus éloquent qui n'en a point."

"Il y a dans le coeur humain une génération perpétuelle de passions, en sorte que la ruine de l'une est presque toujours l'établissement d'une autre."

"Nous avons tous assez de force pour supporter les maux d'autrui."

"La philosophie triomphe aisément des maux passés et des maux à venir. Mais les maux présents triomphent d'elle."

"Il faut de plus grandes vertus pour soutenir la bonne fortune que la mauvaise."

"Le soleil ni la mort ne se peuvent regarder fixement."

"Le mal que nous faisons ne nous attire pas tant de persécution et de haine que nos bonnes qualités."

"Si nous n'avions point de défauts, nous ne prendrions pas tant de plaisir à en remarquer dans les autres."

"La jalousie se nourrit dans les doutes, et elle devient fureur, ou elle finit, sitôt qu'on passe du doute à la certitude."

"Nous promettons selon nos espérances, et nous tenons selon nos craintes."

"L'intérêt parle toutes sortes de langues, et joue toutes sortes de personnages, même celui de désintéressé."

"Ceux qui s'appliquent trop aux petites choses deviennent ordinairement incapables des grandes."

"L'homme croit souvent se conduire lorsqu'il est conduit; et pendant que par son esprit il tend à un but, son coeur l'entraîne insensiblement à un autre."

"On n'est jamais si heureux ni si malheureux qu'on s'imagine."

"Pour s'établir dans le monde, on fait tout ce que l'on peut pour y paraître établi."

"Le bonheur et le malheur des hommes ne dépend pas moins de leur humeur que de la fortune."

"La sincérité est une ouverture de coeur. On la trouve en fort peu de gens; et celle que l'on voit d'ordinaire n'est qu'une fine dissimulation pour attirer la confiance des autres."

"La bonne grâce est au corps ce que le bon sens est à l'esprit."

"Il est difficile de définir l'amour. Dans l'âme c'est une passion de régner, dans les esprits c'est une sympathie, et dans le corps ce n'est qu'une envie cachée et délicate de posséder ce que l'on aime après beaucoup de mystères."

"Il n’y a point de déguisement qui puisse longtemps cacher l’amour où il est, ni le feindre où il n’est pas."

"Il n'y a guère de gens qui ne soient honteux de s'être aimés, quand ils ne s'aiment plus."

"Si on juge de l'amour par la plupart de ses effets, il ressemble plus à la haine qu'à l'amitié."

"On peut trouver des femmes qui n'ont jamais eu de galanterie; mais il est rare d'en trouver qui n'en aient jamais eu qu'une."

"Il n'y a qu'une sorte d'amour, mais il y en a mille différentes copies."

"L'amour aussi bien que le feu ne peut subsister sans un mouvement continuel; et il cesse de vivre dès qu'il cesse d'espérer ou de craindre."

"Il est du véritable amour comme de l'apparition des esprits: tout le monde en parle, mais peu de gens en ont vu."

"L'amour de la justice n'est en la plupart des hommes que la crainte de souffrir l'injustice."

"Le silence est le parti le plus sûr de celui qui se défie de soi-même."

"Ce que les hommes ont nommé amitié n'est qu'une société, qu'un ménagement réciproque d'intérêts, et qu'un échange de bons offices; ce n'est enfin qu'un commerce où l'amour-propre se propose toujours quelque chose à gagner."

"Il est plus honteux de se défier de ses amis que d'en être trompé."

"Tout le monde se plaint de sa mémoire, et personne ne se plaint de son jugement."

"Les vieillards aiment à donner de bons préceptes, pour se consoler de n'être plus en état de donner de mauvais exemples."

"Tel homme est ingrat, qui est moins coupable de son ingratitude que celui qui lui a fait du bien."

"Chacun dit du bien de son coeur et personne n'en ose dire de son esprit."

"Dans l'adversité de nos meilleurs amis, nous trouvons toujours quelque chose qui ne nous déplaît pas."

"L'esprit est toujours la dupe du coeur."

"Tous ceux qui connaissent leur esprit ne connaissent pas leur coeur."

"On ne donne rien si libéralement que ses conseils."

"Il y a de bons mariages, mais il n'y en a point de délicieux."

"L'intention de ne jamais tromper nous expose à être souvent trompés."

"Nous sommes si accoutumés à nous déguiser aux autres qu’enfin nous nous déguisons à nous-mêmes."

"Si nous résistons à nos passions, c'est plus par leur faiblesse que par notre force."

"Le vrai moyen d'être trompé, c'est de se croire plus fin que les autres."

"Il suffit quelquefois d'être grossier pour n'être pas trompé par un habile homme."

"Il est plus aisé d'être sage pour les autres que de l'être pour soi-même."

"Il y a des gens qui n'auraient jamais été amoureux s'ils n'avaint jamais entendu parler de l'amour."

"On parle peu quand la vanité ne fait pas parler."

"On aime mieux dire du mal de soi-même que de n'en point parler."

"Comme c’est le caractère des grands esprits de faire entendre en peu de paroles beaucoup de choses, les petits esprits au contraire ont le don de beaucoup parler, et de ne rien dire."

"On ne loue d'ordinaire que pour être loué."

"Il y a des reproches qui louent et des louanges qui médisent."

"Le refus des louanges est un désir d'être loué deux fois."

"Il est plus difficile de s’empêcher d’être gouverné que de gouverner les autres."

"Ce n'est pas assez d'avoir de grandes qualités, il en faut avoir l'économie."

"The art of using moderate abilities to advantage wins praise, and often acquires more reputation than actual brilliancy."

"Il est plus facile de paraître digne des emplois qu'on n'a pas que de ceux que l'on exerce."

"Il vaut mieux employer notre esprit à supporter les infortunes qui nous arrivent qu'à prévoir celles qui nous peuvent arriver."

"Notre repentir n'est pas tant un regret du mal que nous avons fait, qu'une crainte de celui qui nous en peut arriver."

"Il n'appartient qu'aux grands hommes d'avoir de grands défauts."

"Les défauts de l'âme sont comme les blessures du corps: quelque soin qu'on prenne de les guérir, la cicatrice paraît toujours, et elles sont à tout moment en danger de se rouvrir."

"Ce qui nous empêche souvent de nous abandonner à un seul vice est que nous en avons plusieurs."

"Le désir de paraître habile empêche souvent de le devenir."

"Il y a des gens niais qui se connaissent et qui emploient habilement leur niaiserie."

"Qui vit sans folie n'est pas si sage qu'il croit."

"En vieillissant on devient plus fou et plus sage."

"La plupart des gens ne jugent des hommes que par la vogue qu'ils ont, ou par leur fortune."

"L'hypocrisie est un hommage que le vice rend à la vertu."

"Le trop grand empressement qu'on a de s'acquitter d'une obligation est une espèce d'ingratitude."

"Les gens heureux ne se corrigent guère; ils croient toujours avoir raison quand la fortune soutient leur mauvaise conduite."

"C'est une grande folie de vouloir être sage tout seul."

"Nul ne mérite d’être loué de bonté, s’il n’a pas la force d’être méchant: toute autre bonté n’est le plus souvent qu’une paresse ou une impuissance de la volonté."

"Il n'est pas si dangereux de faire du mal à la plupart des hommes que de leur faire trop de bien."

"C'est une grande habileté que de savoir cacher son habileté."

"La véritable éloquence consiste à dire tout ce qu’il faut, et à ne dire que ce qu’il faut."

"Il y a des personnes à qui les défauts siéent bien, et d'autres qui sont disgraciées avec leurs bonnes qualités."

"Dans toutes les professions chacun affecte une mine et un extérieur pour paraître ce qu'il veut qu'on le croie. Ainsi on peut dire que le monde n'est composé que de mines."

"Le plaisir de l'amour est d'aimer; et l'on est plus heureux par la passion que l'on a que par celle que l'on donne."

"Il n'y a guère d'homme assez habile pour connaître tout le mal qu'il fait."

"L'absence diminue les médiocres passions, et augmente les grandes, comme le vent éteint les bougies et allume le feu."

"Il est impossible d'aimer une seconde fois ce qu'on a véritablement cessé d'aimer."

"Nous aimons toujours ceux qui nous admirent; et nous n'aimons pas toujours ceux que nous admirons."

"La reconnaissance de la plupart des hommes n'est qu'une secrète envie de recevoir de plus grands bienfaits."

"Nous pardonnons souvent à ceux qui nous ennuient, mais nous ne pouvons pardonner à ceux que nous ennuyons."

"On a fait une vertu de la modération pour borner l’ambition des grands hommes, et pour consoler les gens médiocres de leur peu de fortune, et de leur peu de mérite."

"Il arrive quelquefois des accidents dans la vie d'où il faut être un peu fou pour se bien tirer."

"Ce qui fait que les amants et les maîtresses ne s'ennuient point d'être ensemble, c'est qu'ils parlent toujours d'eux-mêmes."

"L’extrême plaisir que nous prenons à parler de nous-mêmes nous doit faire craindre de n’en donner guere à ceux qui nous écoutent."

"Ce n'est pas un grand malheur d'obliger des ingrats, mais c'en est un insupportable d'être obligé à un malhonnête homme."

"Il y a dans la jalousie plus d'amour-propre que d'amour."

"Nous n'avouons de petits défauts que pour persuader que nous n'en avons pas de grands."

"On pardonne tant que l'on aime."

"Nous ne trouvons guère de gens de bon sens, que ceux qui sont de notre avis."

"Ce qui nous donne tant d’aigreur contre ceux qui nous font des finesses, c’est qu’ils croient être plus habiles que nous."

"La jalousie naît toujours avec l'amour, mais elle ne meurt pas toujours avec lui."

"Il y a peu d'honnêtes femmes qui ne soient lasses de leur métier."

"Les esprits médiocres condamnent d'ordinaire tout ce qui passe leur portée."

"Le plus grand défaut de la pénétration n'est pas de n'aller point jusqu'au but, c'est de le passer."

"On donne des conseils mais on n'inspire point de conduite."

"Il n'y a point de gens qui aient plus souvent tort que ceux qui ne peuvent souffrir d'en avoir."

"Ce qui nous rend la vanité des autres insupportable, c'est qu'elle blesse la nôtre."

"Il faut gouverner la fortune comme la santé: en jouir quand elle est bonne, prendre patience quand elle est mauvaise."

"Il y a une élévation qui ne dépend point de la fortune: c’est un certain air qui nous distingue et qui semble nous destiner aux grandes choses; c’est un prix que nous nous donnons imperceptiblement à nous-mêmes; c’est par cette qualité que nous usurpons les déférences des autres hommes, et c’est elle d’ordinaire qui nous met plus au-dessus d’eux que la naissance, les dignités, et le mérite même."

"Il y a du mérite sans élévation, mais il n'y a point d'élévation sans quelque mérite."

"Nous aurions souvent honte de nos plus belles actions, si le monde voyoit tous les motifs qui les produisent."

"La vivacité qui augmente en vieillissant ne va pas loin de la folie."

"En amour, celui qui est guéri le premier est toujours le mieux guéri."

"Peu de gens savent être vieux."

"Rien n'empêche tant d'être naturel que l'envie de le paraître."

"Il est plus aisé de connaître l'homme en général que de connaître un homme en particulier."

"Dans l'amitié comme dans l'amour on est souvent plus heureux par les choses qu'on ignore que par celles que l'on sait."

"Nous essayons de nous faire honneur des défauts que nous ne voulons pas corriger."

"Il s'en faut bien que l'innocence ne trouve autant de protection que le crime."

"De toutes les passions violentes, celle qui sied le moins mal aux femmes, c'est l'amour."

"Dans les premières passions les femmes aiment l'amant, et dans les autres elles aiment l'amour."

"Il y a peu de femmes dont le mérite dure plus que la beauté."

"Il n'y a que les personnes qui ont de la fermeté qui puissent avoir une véritable douceur."

"Ceux qui ont eu de grandes passions se trouvent toute leur vie heureux, et malheureux, d'en être guéris."

"Les querelles ne dureraient pas longtemps, si le tort n'était que d'un côté."

"Il ne sert à rien d'être jeune sans être belle, ni d'être belle sans être jeune."

"C’est une espèce de bonheur, de connaître jusqu’à quel point on doit être malheureux."

"Comment prétendons-nous qu'un autre puisse garder notre secret, si nous ne pouvons le garder nous-mêmes?"

"C'est une ennuyeuse maladie que de conserver sa santé par un trop grand régime."

"Il ne faut pas s’offenser que les autres nous cachent la vérité puisque nous nous la cachons si souvent à nous-mêmes."

"Ce qui nous fait croire si facilement que les autres ont des défauts, c'est la facilité que l'on a de croire ce qu'on souhaite."

"Il est quelquefois agréable à un mari d'avoir une femme jalouse; il entend toujours parler de ce qu'il aime."

"Il est plus difficile de dissimuler les sentiments que l'on a que de feindre ceux que l'on n'a pas."

"Les petits esprits sont blessés des plus petites choses"

"Ce qui fait que si peu de personnes sont agréables dans la conversation, c'est que chacun songe plus à ce qu'il veut dire qu'à ce que les autres disent."

"Il faut écouter ceux qui parlent, si on veut en être écouté."

"La pompe des enterrements regarde plus la vanité des vivants que l'honneur des morts."

"This is no time to be getting all steamed up about La Rochefoucauld. It's only a question of minutes before I'm going to be pretty darned good and sick of La Rochefoucauld, once and for all. La Rochefoucauld this and La Rochefoucauld that. Yes, well, let me tell you that if nobody had ever learned to quote, very few people would be in love with La Rochefoucauld. I bet you I don't know ten souls who read him without a middleman."

"As Rochefoucauld his maxims drew From Nature, I believe 'em true: They argue no corrupted mind In him; the fault is in mankind."

"Without feeling abashed by my ignorance, I confess that I am absolutely unable to say. In the absence of an appearance of learning, my answer has at least one merit, that of perfect sincerity."

"But what is the use of this history, what the use of all this minute research ? I well know that it will not produce a fall in the price of pepper, a rise in that of crates of rotten cabbages, or other serious events of this kind, which cause fleets to be manned and set people face to face intent upon one another's extermination. The insect does not aim at so much glory. It confines itself to showing us life in the inexhaustible variety of its manifestations; it helps us to decipher in some small measure the obscurest book of all, the book of ourselves."

"Do you know the Halicti ? Perhaps not. There is no great harm done: it is quite possible to enjoy the few pleasures of life without knowing the Halicti. Nevertheless, when questioned with persistence, those humble creatures with no history can tell us some very singular things; and their acquaintance is not to be disdained if we desire to enlarge our ideas a little upon the bewildering rabble of this world. Since we have nothing better to do, let us look into these Halicti. They are worth the trouble."

"In many cases, ignorance is a good thing : the mind retains its freedom of investigation and does not stray along roads that lead nowhither, suggested by one's reading. I have experienced this once again. ... Yes, ignorance can have its advantages; the new is found far from the beaten track."

"I have made it a rule to adopt the method of ignorance in my investigations into instincts. I read very little. ... I know nothing. So much the better : my queries will be all the freer, now in this direction, now in the opposite, according to the lights obtained."

"The best thing is to say good-bye, not without a certain regret on my part. One of these days. I will take you and scatter you in your territory, the rock-strewn slope where the sun is so hot. ... There you will learn the hard struggle for life better than you would with me."

"Cuius rei demonstrationem mirabilem sane detexi hanc marginis exiguitas non caperet."

"Et cette proposition est généralement vraie en toutes progressions et en tous nombres premiers; de quoi je vous envoierois la démonstration, si je n'appréhendois d'être trop long."

"There is scarcely any one who states purely arithmetical questions, scarcely any who understands them. Is this not because arithmetic has been treated up to this time geometrically rather than arithmetically? This certainly is indicated by many works ancient and modern. Diophantus himself also indicates this. But he has freed himself from geometry a little more than others have, in that he limits his analysis to rational numbers only; nevertheless the Zetcica of Vieta, in which the methods of Diophantus are extended to continuous magnitude and therefore to geometry, witness the insufficient separation of arithmetic from geometry. Now arithmetic has a special domain of its own, the theory of numbers. This was touched upon but only to a slight degree by Euclid in his Elements, and by those who followed him it has not been sufficiently extended, unless perchance it lies hid in those books of Diophantus which the ravages of time have destroyed. Arithmeticians have now to develop or restore it. To these, that I may lead the way, I propose this theorem to be proved or problem to be solved. If they succeed in discovering the proof or solution, they will acknowledge that questions of this kind are not inferior to the more celebrated ones from geometry either for depth or difficulty or method of proof: Given any number which is not a square, there also exists an infinite number of squares such that when multiplied into the given number and unity is added to the product, the result is a square."

"The result of my work has been the most extraordinary, the most unforeseen, and the happiest, that ever was; for, after having performed all the equations, multiplications, antitheses, and other operations of my method, and having finally finished the problem, I have found that my principle gives exactly and precisely the same proportion for the s which Monsieur Descartes has established."

"Fermat's Last Theorem is to the effect that no integral values of x, y, z can be found to satisfy the equation xn+yn=zn if n is an integer greater than 2. ...It is possible that Fermat made some... erroneous supposition, though it is perhaps more probable that he discovered a rigorous demonstration. At any rate he asserts definitely that he had a valid proof—demonstratio mirabilis sane—and the fact that no theorem on the subject which he stated he had proved has been subsequently shown to be false must weigh strongly in his favour; the more so because in making the one incorrect statement in his writings (namely, that about binary powers) he added that he could not obtain a satisfactory demonstration of it. … it took more than a century before some of the simpler results which Fermat had enunciated were proved, and thus it is not surprising that a proof of the theorem which he succeeded in establishing only towards the close of his life should involve great difficulties. ...I venture however to add my private suspicion that continued fractions played a not unimportant part in his researches, and as strengthening this conjecture I may note that some of his more recondite results—such as the theorem that a prime of the form 4n+1 is expressible as the sum of two squares— may be established with comparative ease by properties of such fractions."

"Descartes' method of finding tangents and normals... was not a happy inspiration. It was quickly superseded by that of Fermat as amplified by Newton. Fermat's method amounts to obtaining a tangent as the limiting position of a secant, precisely as is done in the calculus today. ...Fermat's method of tangents is the basis of the claim that he anticipated Newton in the invention of the differential calculus."

"Perhaps nowhere does one find a better example of the value of historical knowledge for mathematicians than in the case of Fermat, for it is safe to say that, had he not been intimately acquainted with the geometry of Apollonius and Viéte, he would not have invented analytic geometry."

"Fermat had recourse to the principle of the economy of nature. Heron and Olympiodorus had pointed out in antiquity that, in reflection, light followed the shortest possible path, thus accounting for the equality of angles. During the medieval period Alhazen and Grosseteste had suggested that in refraction some such principle was also operating, but they could not discover the law. Fermat, however, not only knew (through Descartes) the law of refraction, but he also invented a procedure—equivalent to the differential calculus—for maximizing and minimizing a function of a single variable. ...Fermat applied his method ...and discovered, to his delight, that the result led to precisely the law which Descartes had enunciated. But although the law is the same, it will be noted that the hypothesis contradicts that of Descartes. Fermat assumed that the speed of light in water to be less than that in air; Descartes' explanation implied the opposite."

"Since Fermat introduced the conception of infinitely small differences between consecutive values of a function and arrived at the principle for finding the maxima and minima, it was maintained by Lagrange, Laplace, and Fourier, that Fermat may be regarded as the first inventor of the differential calculus. This point is not well taken, as will be seen from the words of Poisson, himself a Frenchman, who rightly says that the differential calculus "consists in a system of rules proper for finding the differentials of all functions, rather than in the use which may be made of these infinitely small variations in the solution of one or two isolated problems.""

"J.M. Child... has made a searching study of Barrow and has arrived at startling conclusions on the historical question relating to the first invention of the calculus. He places his conclusions in italics in the first sentence as follows Isaac Barrow was the first inventor of the Infinitesimal Calculus... Before entering upon an examination of the evidence brought forth by Child it may be of interest to review a similar claim set up for another man as inventor of the calculus... Fermat was declared to be the first inventor of the calculus by Lagrange, Laplace, and apparently also by P. Tannery, than whom no more distinguished mathematical triumvirate can easily be found. ...Dinostratus and Barrow were clever men, but it seems to us that they did not create what by common agreement of mathematicians has been designated by the term differential and integral calculus. Two processes yielding equivalent results are not necessarily the same. It appears to us that what can be said of Barrow is that he worked out a set of geometric theorems suggesting to us constructions by which we can find lines, areas and volumes whose magnitudes are ordinarily found by the analytical processes of the calculus. But to say that Barrow invented a differential and integral calculus is to do violence to the habit of mathematical thought and expression of over two centuries. The invention rightly belongs to Newton and Leibniz."

"Fermat applied his method of tangents to many difficult problems. The method has the form of the now-standard method of differential calculus, though it begs entirely the difficult theory of limits."

"Fermat knew that under reflection light takes the path requiring least time and, convinced that nature does indeed act simply and economically, affirmed in letters of 1657 and 1662 his Principle of Least Time, which states that light always takes the path requiring least time. He had doubted the correctness of the law of refraction of light but when he found in 1661 that he could deduce it from his Principle, he not only resolved his doubts about the law but felt all the more certain that his Principle was correct. ...Huygens, who had at first objected to Fermat's Principle, showed that it does hold for the propagation of light in media with variable indices of refraction. Even Newton's first law of motion, which states that the straight line or shortest distance is the natural motion of a body, showed nature's desire to economize. These examples suggested that there might be a more general principle. The search for such a principle was undertaken by Maupertuis."

"One may regard Fermat as the first inventor of the new calculus. In his method De maximis et minimis he equates the quantity of which one seeks the maximum or the minimum to the expression of the same quantity in which the unknown is increased by the indeterminate quantity. In this equation he causes the radicals and fractions, if any such there be, to disappear and after having crossed out the terms common to the two numbers, he divides all others by the indeterminate quantity which occurs in them as a factor; then he takes this quantity zero and he has an equation which serves to determine the unknown sought. ...It is easy to see at first glance that the rule of the differential calculus which consists in equating to zero the differential of the expression of which one seeks a maximum or a minimum, obtained by letting the unknown of that expression vary, gives the same result, because it is the same fundamentally and the terms one neglects as infinitely small in the differential calculus are those which are suppressed as zeroes in the procedure of Fermat. His method of tangents depends on the same principle. In the equation involving the abscissa and ordinate which he calls the specific property of the curve, he augments or diminishes the abscissa by an indeterminate quantity and he regards the new ordinate as belonging both to the curve and to the tangent; this furnishes him with an equation which he treats as that for a case of a maximum or a minimum. ...Here again one sees the analogy of the method of Fermat with that of the differential calculus; for, the indeterminate quantity by which one augments the abscissa x corresponds to its differential dx, and the quantity ye/t, which is the corresponding augmentation [Footnote: Fermat lets e be the increment of x, and t the subtangent for the point x,y on the curve.] of y, corresponds to the differential dy. It is also remarkable that in the paper which contains the discovery of the differential calculus, printed in the Leipsic Acts of the month of October, 1684, under the title Nova methodus pro maximis et minimis etc., Leibnitz calls dy a line which is to the arbitrary increment dx as the ordinate y is to the subtangent; this brings his analysis and that of Fermat nearer together. One sees therefore that the latter has opened the quarry by an idea that is very original, but somewhat obscure, which consists in introducing in the equation an indeterminate which should be zero by the nature of the question, but which is not made to vanish until after the entire equation has been divided by that same quantity. This idea has become the germ of new calculi which have caused geometry and mechanics to make such progress, but one may say that it has brought also the obscurity of the principles of these calculi. And now that one has a quite clear idea of these principles, one sees that the indeterminate quantity which Fermat added to the unknown simply serves to form the derived function which must be zero in the case of a maximum or minimum, and which serves in general to determine the position of tangents of curves. But the geometers contemporary with Fermat did not seize the spirit of this new kind of calculus; they did not regard it but a special artifice, applicable simply to certain cases and subject to many difficulties, ...moreover, this invention which appeared a little before the Géométrie of Descartes remained sterile during nearly forty years. ...Finally Barrow contrived to substitute for the quantities which were supposed to be zero according to Fermat quantities that were real but infinitely small, and he published in 1674 his method of tangents, which is nothing but a construction of the method of Fermat by means of the infinitely small triangle, formed by the increments of the abscissa e, the ordinate ey/t, and of the infinitely small arc of the curve regarded as a polygon. This contributed to the creation of the system of infinitesimals and of the differential calculus."

"This great geometrician expresses by the character E the increment of the abscissa; and considering only the first power of this increment, he determines exactly as we do by differential calculus the subtangents of the curves, their points of inflection, the maxima and minima of their ordinates, and in general those of rational functions. We see likewise by his beautiful solution of the problem of the refraction of light inserted in the Collection of the Letters of Descartes that he knows how to extend his methods to irrational functions in freeing them from irrationalities by the elevation of the roots to powers. Fermat should be regarded, then, as the true discoverer of Differential Calculus. Newton has since rendered this calculus more analytical in his Method of Fluxions, and simplified and generalized the processes by his beautiful theorem of the binomial. Finally, about the same time Leibnitz has enriched differential calculus by a notation which, by indicating the passage from the finite to the infinitely small, adds to the advantage of expressing the general results of calculus, that of giving the first approximate values of the differences and of the sums of the quantities; this notation is adapted of itself to the calculus of partial differentials."

"I had a hint of this method [of fluxions] from Fermat's way of drawing tangents, and by applying it to abstract equations, directly and invertedly, I made it general."

"Fermat is... honored with the invention of the differential calculus on account of his method of maxima and minima and of tangents, which, of the prior processes, is in reality the nearest to the algorithm of Leibniz; one could with equal justice, attribute to him the invention of the integral calculus; his treatise De æquationum localium transmutatione, etc., gives indeed the method of integration by parts as well as rules of integration, except the general powers of variables, their sines and powers thereof. However, it must be remarked that one does not find in his writings a single word on the main point, the relation between the two branches of the infinitesimal calculus."

"Vous êtes mon ami personnel. Vous êtes assuré de mon estime, de ma considération et de mon affection."

"La France est l'amie et l'alliée de l'Irak."

"Notre maison brûle et nous regardons ailleurs. La nature, mutilée, surexploitée, ne parvient plus à se reconstituer et nous refusons de l'admettre. L'humanité souffre. Elle souffre de mal-développement, au nord comme au sud, et nous sommes indifférents. La terre et l'humanité sont en péril et nous en sommes tous responsables."

"As far as France is concerned, we are ready to envisage everything that can be done under UNSCR 1441. [...] But I repeat that every possibility offered by the present resolution must be explored, that there are a lot of them and they still leave us with a lot of leeway when it comes to ways of achieving the objective of eliminating any weapons of mass destruction which may exist in Iraq. I'd like nevertheless to note that, as things stand at the moment, I have, to my knowledge, no indisputable proof in this sphere."

"On n'exporte pas la démocratie dans un fourgon blindé."

"Anything that can hurt the convictions of another, particularly religious convictions, must be avoided. Freedom of expression must be exercised in a spirit of responsibility. I condemn all manifest provocation that might dangerously fan passions."

"Ne composez jamais avec l'extrémisme, le racisme, l'antisémitisme ou le rejet de l'autre."

"J'ai été militant de l'ANC de Mandela depuis la fin des années soixante, le début des années soixante-dix. J'ai été approché par Hassan II, le roi du Maroc, pour aider au financement de l'ANC. [...] Je me souviens qu'à l'époque, le président sud-africain, que devait être Vorster, exerçait d'énormes pressions auprès de nos ministres pour qu'ils viennent en Afrique du sud. Un certain nombre de ministres français ont accepté ces invitations. Moi aussi, j'ai été très sollicité... Les dirigeants de l'Afrique du Sud voulaient nous faire croire que l'apartheid était normal, ou n'existait pas. J'ai déclaré officiellement, et de la manière la plus claire, urbi et orbi que je n'y mettrais pas les pieds tant que l'apartheid existerait."

"I would say that what is dangerous about this situation is not the fact of having a nuclear bomb. Having one or perhaps a second bomb a little later, well, that's not very dangerous. Where will it drop it, this bomb? On Israel? It would not have gone 200 meters into the atmosphere before Tehran would be razed. ...It is obvious that this bomb, at the moment it was launched, obviously would be destroyed immediately. We have the means -- several countries have the means to destroy a bomb."

"There have been women I have loved ... A lot, as discreetly as possible."

"France has been at the receiving end of bucket loads of commentary in recent days. It is not France alone that wants more time for inspections. Germany wants more time for inspections; Russia wants more time for inspections; indeed, at no time have we signed up even the minimum necessary to carry a second resolution. We delude ourselves if we think that the degree of international hostility is all the result of President Chirac. The reality is that Britain is being asked to embark on a war without agreement in any of the international bodies of which we are a leading partner – not NATO, not the European Union and, now, not the Security Council."

"Power corrupts, and, in many cases, absolute power makes you really horny. Clinton, Chirac, Mao, Mitterrand."

"One has to seek Beauty and Truth, Sir! As I always say to my pupils, you have to work to the finish. There's only one kind of painting. It is the painting that presents the eye with perfection, the kind of beautiful and impeccable enamel you find in Veronese and Titian."

"For me a work of art must be an elevated interpretation of nature. The search for the ideal has been the purpose of my life. In landscape or seascape, I love above all the poetic motif."

"William Bouguereau is unquestionably one of history's greatest artistic geniuses. Yet in the past century, his reputation and unparalleled accomplishments have undergone a libelous, dishonest, relentless and systematic assault of immense proportions. His name was stricken from most history texts and when included it was only to blindly, degrade and disparage him and his work. Yet, as we shall see, it was he who single handedly opened the French academies to women, and it was he who was arguably the greatest painter of the human figure in all of art history. His figures come to life like no previous artist has ever before or ever since achieved. He wasn't just the best ever at painting human anatomy, more importantly he captured the tender and subtlest nuances of personality and mood. Bouguereau caught the very souls and spirits of his subjects much like Rembrandt. Rembrandt is said to have captured the soul of age. Bouguereau captured the soul of youth."

"It is quite certain that in seeing the people who treat us so well despite their own misfortune, we are more obliged than ever to work hard for their happiness. The king seems to understand this truth; as for myself, I know that in my whole life (even if I live for a hundred years) I shall never forget the day of the coronation."

"We had a beautiful dream and that was all. The interest of my son is the only guide I have, and whatever happiness I could achieve by being free of this place I cannot consent to separate my self from him. I could not have any pleasure in the world if I abandoned my children.I do not even have any regrets."

"Courage! I have shown it for years; think you I shall lose it at the moment when my sufferings are to end?"

"Madame d'Adhémar, here is another missive from my unknown. Have you not heard people talking again of the Comte de St.--Germain?... This time, the oracle has used the language which becomes him, the epistle is in verse; it may be bad, but it is not very cheering. You shall read it at your leisure...The unknown says the same as you do; but who is wrong or right?'"

"What do you make of these threatening verses?... Pray heaven you speak truly, Madame d’Adhémar, however, these are strange experiences. Who is this personage who has taken an interest in me for so many years without making himself known, without seeking any reward, and who yet has always told me the truth? He now warns me of the overthrow of everything that exists and, if he gives a gleam of hope, it is so distant that I may not reach it... You fancy that I possess credit or power in our Salon. You are mistaken; I had the misfortune to believe that a Queen was permitted to have friends. The consequence is that all try to rule me, or to use me for their own personal advantage. I am the centre of a crowd of intrigues, which I have difficulty in avoiding."

"The King of Prussia is innately a bad neighbor, but the English will also always be bad neighbors to France, and the sea has never prevented them from doing her great mischief."

"No harm will come to me. The Assembly is prepared to treat us leniently."

"I have come, Sire, to complain of one of your subjects who has been so audacious as to kick me in the belly."

"We made our entrance into Paris. As for honors, we received all that we could possibly imagine; but they, though very well in their way, were not what touched me most. What was really affecting was the tenderness and earnestness of the poor people, who, in spite of the taxes with which they are overwhelmed, were transported with joy at seeing us."

"In a month’s time, I shall be able to give your Majesty news of the Comtesse de Provence, for the marriage is fixed for May 14th; they had prepared many fetes for this marriage, but now they are economising in them for want of money."

"Pardon me, sir, I did not do it on purpose."

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then the dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she just began to move in,—glittering like the morning star, full of life and splendor, and joy. Oh! what a revolution! and what a heart must I have, to contemplate without emotion that elevation and that fall! Little did I dream when she added titles of veneration to those of enthusiastic, distant, respectful love, that she should ever be obliged to carry the sharp antidote against disgrace concealed in that bosom; little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fallen upon her in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honour and of cavaliers. I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards to avenge even a look that threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone.—That of sophisters, economists; and calculators has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is extinguished forever."

"[Her] rumored tribadism had historically specific political implications. Consider her final (fictive) testimony in The Confession of Marie-Antoinette: 'People!' she protests, 'because I ceded to the sweet impressions of nature, and in imitating the charming weakness of all the women of the court of France, I surrendered to the sweet impulsion of love...you hold me, as it were, captive within your walls?'""

"I had determined to go as far as declaring in abstruse and puzzling utterances the future causes of the "common advent", even those truly cogent ones that I have foreseen. Yet lest whatever human changes may be to come should scandalise delicate ears, the whole thing is written in nebulous form, rather than as a clear prophecy of any kind."

"Tomorrow, I shall no longer be here."

"If I have eschewed the word prophet, I do not wish to attribute to myself such lofty title at the present time, for whoever is called a prophet now was once called a seer; since a prophet, my son, is properly speaking one who sees distant things through a natural knowledge of all creatures. And it can happen that the prophet bringing about the perfect light of prophecy may make manifest things both human and divine, because this cannot be done otherwise, given that the effects of predicting the future extend far off into time."

"Perfect knowledge of such things cannot be acquired without divine inspiration, given that all prophetic inspiration derives its initial origin from God Almighty, then from chance and nature. Since all these portents are produced impartially, prophecy comes to pass partly as predicted. For understanding created by the intellect cannot be acquired by means of the occult, only by the aid of the zodiac, bringing forth that small flame by whose light part of the future may be discerned. We need god to prosper those without him will not."

"Estant assis de nuit secret estude, Seul repousé sur la selle d'ærain, Flambe exigue sortant de solitude, Fait prosperer qui n'est à croire vain."

"When twenty years of the Moon's reign have passed another will take up his reign for seven thousand years. When the exhausted Sun takes up his cycle then my prophecy and threats will be accomplished."

"Were we to record the failures and ridiculous blunders of astronomers, we are afraid they would outnumber by far those of the astrologers. Present events fully vindicate Nostradamus, who has been so much ridiculed by our skeptics."

"On cesse de s'aimer si quelqu'un ne nous aime."

"L'amour est l'histoire de la vie des femmes; c'est un épisode dans celle des hommes."

"The evil arising from mental improvement can be corrected only by a still further progress in that very improvement. Either morality is a fable, or the more enlightened we are, the more attached to it we become."

"If we would succeed in works of the imagination, we must offer a mild morality in the midst of rigid manners; but where the manners are corrupt, we must consistently hold up to view an austere morality."

"One must, in one's life, make a choice between boredom and suffering."

"Un homme doit savoir braver l'opinion; une femme s'y soumettre."

"It seems to me that life's circumstances, being ephemeral, teach us less about durable truths than the fictions based on those truths; and that the best lessons of delicacy and self-respect are to be found in novels where the feelings are so naturally portrayed that you fancy you are witnessing real life as you read."

"In matters of the heart, nothing is true except the improbable."

"Superstition attaches to this life, and religion to the next; superstition is allied to fatality, and religion to virtue; it is from the vivacity of earthly desires that we become superstitious, and it is, on the contrary, by the sacrifice of these same desires that we are religious."

"Life often seems like a long shipwreck, of which the débris are friendship, fame, and love."

"I must keep on rowing, not until I reach port but until I reach my grave."

"You [America] are the vanguard of the human race. You are the world’s future."

"Madame de Staël thought it was pride in mankind to endeavour to penetrate the secret of the universe; and speaking of the higher metaphysics she said: "I prefer the Lord's Prayer to it all.""

"Sow good services: sweet remembrances will grow from them."

"Men do not change; they unmask themselves."

"Genius has no sex!"

"Frivolity, under whatever form it appears, deprives attention of its power, thought of its originality, and sentiment of its depth."

"Tout ce qui est naturel est varié."

"When once enthusiasm has been turned into ridicule, everything is undone except money and power."

"You do not reach the sublime by degrees; the distance between it and the merely beautiful is infinite."

"La vue d'un tel monument est comme une musique continuelle et fixée, qui vous attend pour vous faire du bien quand vous vous en approchez."

"When men do wrong, it is out of hardness; when women do wrong, it is out of weakness."

"Genius is essentially creative; it bears the stamp of the individual who possesses it."

"Love is the emblem of eternity; it confounds all notion of time; effaces all memory of a beginning, all fear of an end: we fancy that we have always possessed what we love, so difficult is it to imagine how we could have lived without it."

"Beauty is one in the universe, and, whatever form it assumes, it always arouses a religious feeling in the hearts of mankind."

"Let us then blend everything: love, religion, genius, with sunshine, perfume, music, and poetry."

"Atheism exists only in coldness, selfishness, and baseness."

"A religious life is a struggle and not a hymn."

"Danger is like wine, it goes to your head."

"O Earth! all bathed with blood and tears, yet never Hast thou ceased putting forth thy fruit and flowers."

"Ought not every woman, like every man, to follow the bent of her own talents?"

"Tout comprendre rend très-indulgent."

"Be happy, but be so by piety."

"Innocence in genius, and candor in power, are both noble qualities."

"There is perhaps too much freedom in Protestantism to satisfy a certain religious austerity, which may seize upon the man who is overwhelmed by great misfortunes; sometimes even in the habitual course of life, the reality of this world disappears all at once, and we feel ourselves in the middle of its interests as we should at a ball, where we did not hear the music; the dancing that we saw there would appear insane."

"L'esprit consiste à connaître la ressemblance des choses diverses et la différence des choses semblables."

"La voix de la conscience est si délicate, qu'il est facile d'étouffer; mais elle est si pure, qu'il est impossible de la méconnaître."

"La religion n'est rien si elle n'est pas tout, si l'existence n'en est pas remplie."

"L'admiration pour le beau se rapporte toujours à la Divinité."

"La recherche de la vérité est la plus noble des occupations, et sa publication un devoir."

"Ces règles ne sont que des barrières pour empêcher les enfants de tomber."

"Le sens de ce mot, chez les Grecs, en est la plus noble définition: l'enthousiasme signifie Dieu en nous ."

"The desire of the man is for the woman, but the desire of the woman is for the desire of the man."

"The human mind always makes progress, but it is a progress in spirals."

"Madame de Staël, daughter of M. Necker, is now at the head of the colony of French noblesse, established near Mickleham. She is one of the first women I have ever met with for abilities and extraordinary intellect."

"Who talks from thought and reflection is rarely eloquent; Madame de Staël was the only exception I ever knew to that rule."

"Feminist literary critics have shown how in the 19th century women writers began to acknowledge women as their muses and their role models... Elizabeth Barrett Browning admired the work of George Sand and Mme. de Staël, while her work, in its turn, was an inspiration to Emily Dickinson. Margaret Fuller and Sarah Orne Jewett acknowledged their indebtedness to Mme. de Staël, the author of Corinne... The list could be indefinitely extended to show the almost desperate search of writing women for authoritative female predecessors."

"Nature, or to speak in more Christian fashion, God, the common Father of men, from the outset gave equal rights to all his children to all the things they needed to preserve their lives. None of us can boast of being more privileged than the rest by nature; but through the insatiable desire to amass wealth, it became impossible for this beautiful brotherhood to endure for long in the world. Men had to resort to division and possession, which resulted in constant quarrels and litigation; of this were born the words 'mine' and 'thine'—such cold terms, as the admirable St. John Chrysostom remarks—of this, too, was born the great diversity of conditions, some living in affluence in every respect, others languishing in penury."

"Il faut aller jusqu'á l'horreur quand on se connaît."

"[L]e monde même vous désabuse du monde."

"La foi est une adhérence du cœur à la vérité éternelle."

"[L]es hérésies n'ont jamais été que des opinions particulières, puisqu'elles ont commencé par cinq ou six hommes."

"[C]et inexorable ennui, qui fait le fond de la vie humaine depui que l'homme a perdu le goût de Dieu!"

"L'hérétique est celui qui ha une opinion; et c'est ce que le mot même signifie. Quest-ce a dire, avoir une opinion? C'est suivre sa propre pensée et son sentiment particulier. Mais le Catholique est catholique: c'est-a-dire qu'il est universel; et sans avoir de sentiment particulier, il suit sans hèsiter celui de l'Eglise."

"[L]a felicité de l'homme consiste a vivre selon la raison."

"Honor is like the eye, which cannot suffer the least impurity without damage. It is a precious stone, the price of which is lessened by a single flaw."

"Only great souls know the grandeur there is in charity."

"Ainsi il appartient à l'esprit , c'est-a-dire à l'intendement, de juger de la beauté; parce que juger de la beauté, c'est juger de l'ordre, de la proportion et de la justesse; choses que l'esprit seul peut apercevoir."

"[L]'imagination aide beaucoup l'intelligence."

"Le fruit de la démonstration est la science."

"[T]oute vérité démontrée est nécessaire, eternelle et immuable."

"[I]l n'y a rien de pire que l'anarchie, c'est-a-dire de vivre sans gouvernement et sans lois."

"Le plus grand dérèglement de l'esprit, c'est de croire les choses parce qu'on veut qu'elles soient et non parce qu'on a vu qu'elles sont en effet."

"Un homme ne veut point croire qu'il soit orgueilleux, ni lâche, ni paresseux, ni emporté; il veut croire que qu'il a raison; et quoique su conscience lui reproche souvent ses fautes, il aime mieux étordir lui-même le sentiment qu'il en a, que d'avoir le chagrin de les connaître."

"Il n'y a donc rien de meilleur, pour ben juger des animaux, que d'étudier soi-même auparavant. Car encore que nous ayons quelque chose au-dessus de l'animal, nous sommes animaux, et nous avons l'expérience tant de ce que fait en nous l'animal que de ce qu'y fait le raisonnement et la réflexion."

"Ne croyons pas que notre âme sait une portion de la nature divine, comme l'ont revé quelques philosophes. Dieu n'est pas un tout qui se partage."

"[L]e destinée ordinaire de ceux qui refusent de prêter l'oreille à la vérité est d'être entraînés à leur perte par des prophètes menteurs."

"Les uns alléguant toujours que la liberté excessive se détruit enfin elle-même; et les autres craignant au contraire que l'autorité, que de sa nature croît toujours, ne dégénérât enfin en tyrannie."

"Le propre de l'hérétique, c'est-à-dire de colui qui a une opinion particulière, est de s'attacher à ses propres pensées; et le propre du catholique, c'est-à-dire de l'universel, est de préférer à ses sentiments le sentiment commun de tout l'Eglise."

"Mais Dieu se rit des prières qu'on lui fait pour détourner les malheurs publics, quand on ne s'oppose pas à ce qui se fait pour les attirer. Que dis-je? quand on l'approuve et qu'on y souscrit, quoique ce soit avec répugnance."

"[D]éisme, c-est-à-dire […] un athéisme déguisé."

"Le premier de tous les empires est celui qu'on a sur ses désirs."

"C'est le plus grande de toutes les faiblesses, que de craindre trop rie paraître faible."

"Au milieu des déguisements et des artifices qui règnent parmi les hommes, il n'y a que l'attention et la vigilance qui nous puissent sauver des surprises."

"[L]a perfection est la raison d'être."

"Dieu est celui en qui le non-être n'a pas de lieu."

"La sagesse humaine apprend beaucoup, si elle apprend à se taire."

"Bossuet was a man you instinctively approached on all fours."

"La gloire de Bossuet est devenue l'une des religions de la France."

"I am a believer and a conformist. Anyone can revolt; it is more difficult silently to obey our own interior promptings, and to spend our lives finding sincere and fitting means of expression for our temperaments and our gifts — if we have any. I do not say "neither God, nor Master," only in the end to substitute myself for the God I have excommunicated...""

"Like the ostrich, head under wing When the roaring storm breaks, So many people take refuge Under the soft pillow Of specious arguments."

"A painter who loves his art must be careful not to see too much of critics and men of letters. These gentlemen, however unconsciously, distort everything, thinking that they are explaining it — the artist's thought, sensibility, and intensions. They take away his strength, just as Delilah took away Samson's. They have no gift for nuances, and they have an instinctive aversion for everything that is beyond their reach and baffles them."

"Nothing is old, nothing is new, save the light of grace underneath which beats a human heart. The way of feeling, of understanding, of loving; the way of seeing the country, the faces that your father saw, that your mother knew. The rest is chimerical...""

"Often pagans, with their eyes wide open, do not see very clearly."

"Painting for me is merely a means of forgetting life. It is a cry in the night. A sob broken off. A strangled laugh."

"The richness of the world, all artificial pleasures, have the taste of sickness and give off a smell of death in the face of certain spiritual possessions."

"The artist discards all theories, both his own and those of others. He forgets everything when he is in front of his canvas."

"The conscience of an artist worthy of the name is like an incurable disease which causes him endless torment but occasionally fills him with silent joy …"

"The painter who loves his art is ruler in his own kingdom, even if he be in Lilliput and a Lilliputian himself. He transforms a kitchen maid in to a fairy, and a great lady into a brothel matron, if he wants to and sees them so, for he is a seer. His vision includes everything that is alive in the past."

"The old masters are perfect and admirable examples, on condition that we remember that the spirit gives life and the letter kills, and that even the best pastiche is inferior to the harmonious stammering or incoherence of a child trying to speak."

"Quar nous navons volu ne volons le Temple mettre en aucune servitute se non tant come il hy affiert."

"Let evil swiftly befall those who have wrongly condemned us - God will avenge us."

"It is just that, in so terrible a day, and in the last moments of my life, I should discover all the iniquity of falsehood, and make the truth triumph. I declare, then, in the face of heaven and earth, and acknowledge, though to my eternal shame, that I have committed the greatest crimes but it has been the acknowledging of those which have been so foully charged on the order. I attest - and truth obliges me to attest - that it is innocent! I made the contrary declaration only to suspend the excessive pains of torture, and to mollify those who made me endure them. I know the punishments which have been inflicted on all the knights who had the courage to revoke a similar confession; but the dreadful spectacle which is presented to me is not able to make me confirm one lie by another. The life offered me on such infamous terms I abandon without regret."

"Science does not permit exceptions."

"Science admits no exceptions; otherwise there would be no determinism in science, or rather, there would be no science."

"The stability of the internal medium is a primary condition for the freedom and independence of certain living bodies in relation to the environment surrounding them."

"All the vital mechanisms, varied as they are, have only one object, that of preserving constant the conditions of life in the internal environment."

"The mental never influences the physical. It is always the physical that modifies the mental, and when we think that the mind is diseased, it is always an illusion."

"Considered in itself, the experimental method is nothing but reasoning by whose help we methodically submit our ideas to experience,—the experience of facts."

"[T]he science of life […] is a superb and dazzlingly lighted hall which may be reached only by passing through a long and ghastly kitchen."

"In sciences of observation, man observes and reasons experimentally, but he does not experiment; and in this sense we might say that a science of observation is a passive science. In sciences of experimentation, man observes, but in addition he acts on matter, analyzes its properties and to his own advantage brings about the appearance of phenomena which doubtless always occur according to natural laws, but in conditions which nature often has not yet achieved. With the help of these active experimental sciences, man becomes an inventor of phenomena, a real foreman of creation: and under this head we cannot set limits to the power that he may gain over nature through future progress in the experimental sciences."

"Men who have excessive faith in their theories or ideas are not only ill prepared for making discoveries; they also make very poor observations."

"[T]hey make poor observations, because they choose among the results of their experiments only what suits their object, neglecting whatever is unrelated to it, and carefully setting aside everything which might tend toward the idea they wish to combat."

"[T]he experimental method draws from within itself an impersonal authority which dominates science. It forces this authority even on great men.[…] Every period has its own sum total of errors and of truths. Certain mistakes are, in a sense, inherent in their period, so that only the subsequent progress of science can reveal them.… [T]he further science advances, the more it takes an impersonal form and detaches itself from the past."

"A contemporary poet has characterized this sense of the personality of art and of the impersonality of science in these words,—"Art is myself, science is ourselves.""

"[I]t is important to determine at what point to apply doubt, so as to distinguish it from scepticism, and to show how scientific doubt becomes an element of the greatest certainty. The sceptic disbelieves in science and believes in himself; he believes enough in himself to dare deny science and to assert that it is not subject to definite, fixed laws. The doubter is a true man of science; he doubts only himself and his interpretations, but he believes in science; in the experimental sciences, he even accepts a criterion of absolute scientific principle."

"Indeed, proof that a given condition always precedes or accompanies a phenomenon does not warrant concluding with certainty that a given condition is the immediate cause of that phenomenon. It must still be established that, when this condition is removed, the phenomenon will no longer appear."

"[A] living organism is nothing but a wonderful machine."

"[S]cience, in humbling our pride, proportionately increases our power."

"[P]articular facts are never scientific; only generalization can establish science."

"A great surgeon performs operations for stone by a single method; later he makes a statistical summary of deaths and recoveries, and he concludes from these statistics that the mortality law for this operation is two out of five. Well, I say that this ratio means literally nothing scientifically and gives us no certainty in performing the next operation; for we do not know whether the next case will be among the recoveries or the deaths. What really should be done, instead of gathering facts empirically, is to study them more accurately, each in its special determinism. We must study cases of death with great care and try to discover in them the cause of mortal accidents so as to master the cause and avoid the accidents."

"When we meet a fact which contradicts a prevailing theory, we must accept the fact and abandon the theory, even when the theory is supported by great names and generally accepted."

"[T]heories are only hypotheses, verified by more or less numerous facts. Those verified by the most facts are the best; but even then they are never final, never to be absolutely believed."

"Our language, in fact, is only approximate, and even in science it is so indefinite that if we lose sight of phenomena and cling to words, we are speedily outside of reality.… [W]e must always cling to phenomena and see in words only expressions empty of meaning, if the phenomena they represent are not definite, or if they are absent."

"Ardent desire for knowledge, in fact, is the one motive attracting and supporting investigators in their efforts; and just this knowledge, really grasped and yet always flying before them, becomes at once their sole torment and sole happiness.… [A] man of science rises ever, in seeking truth; and if he never finds it in its wholeness, he discovers nevertheless very significant fragments; and these fragments of universal truth are precisely what constitutes science."

"True science teaches us to doubt and to abstain from ignorance."

"Science increases our power in proportion as it lowers our pride."

"If I had to define life in a word, it would be: Life is creation."

"A modern poet has characterized the personality of art and the impersonality of science as follows: Art is I: Science is We."

"Man can learn nothing unless he proceeds from the known to the unknown."

"We must never make experiments to confirm our ideas, but simply to control them."

"Europe is a commercial giant and an economic power of the first rank, but it is a political dwarf. Political cooperation in the Community will grow. The question is whether the supply services will follow."

"I take what is good where I find it. I am for what the Anglo-Saxons call a 'policy mix' in the context of a mixed economy. ... I would simply say...without wishing to offend anyone, that you appreciate the distance which separates British Leyland from Renault. We want to have more Renaults. It is the difference between an industrial policy which succeeds and one which does not."

"Socialism was not the socialization of losses and the privatization of profits."

"My feeling is that we will not be able to take all the decisions which will be necessary from now until 1995 unless there is the embryo of a European government in one form or another."

"It is impossible to build Europe on only deregulation...1992 is much more than the creation of an internal market abolishing barriers to the free movement of goods services and investment...The internal market should be designed to benefit each and every citizen of the Community. It is therefore necessary to improve workers' living and working conditions, and to provide better protection for their health and safety at work...Europe needs you."

"My objective is that before the end of the millennium Europe should have a true federation. The Commission should become a political executive which can define essential common interests...responsible before the European Parliament and before the nation-states represented how you will, by the European Council or by a second chamber of national parliaments."

"The Americans should stop insulting us, I'm not going to be an accomplice to the depopulation of the land. It's not up to the Americans to tell us how to organise our farm policy and the balance of our society. Their attitude is to treat the EC as if it had the plague and then encourage the rest of the world to join in."

"The social and human balance of our societies depend on the farming world."

"It is not sufficient to have a strong economy to influence events. You also have to political and military power. ... A community limited to a big market refusing to resume its responsibilities and ambitions in the world will not be peaceful, will not be able to assure its children that they will live in security. [If Europe is to have political personality it would have to have] a common foreign policy in certain domains and military co-operation that will lead, before 1995, to the creation of a multilateral rapid intervention force."

"If we do not succeed with political union...then the historic decline of Europe which began with the First World War will resume."

"The crux is the reform of the treaty which would lead to common action. There must be a will to defend the central interests of Europe. If there is no majority voting, then the same level of impotence will continue."

"Federalism is a guideline, not a pornographic word, you can speak it out loud...We have been focusing too much on a country that has said no, no, no!"

"If we are really on the way towards a political entity with a common foreign policy on basic issues, then I consider that France's nuclear force should be available to serve that policy."

"Farmers have their dignity, just as others do. It is fine to make efforts to make them react to markets, but you cannot then tie their hands and take away their choices. That is putting them in a straitjacket. ... I have always felt that the Community should be able to say 'No' to its big brother [America]."

"[I criticise those] countries that used currency devaluation as a lever to win jobs. I would refer you to one member state of the Community without name it. Those who devalue in an extreme way will find health at the expense of the rest of the Community. It's like three people shipwrecked—one person floats for the sake of the other two going under."

"We must define the political Europe that we want. We must plead for the federal approach."

"Cars are free to circulate but still there are speed limits, therefore I do not see why, at the international level, we should not study ways to limit monetary movements. Bankers cannot act at will. ... Why should we not draw up some rules of the game?"

"He thinks I am the man of the past but I am still here. He is the man of the past."

"Europe will have 30 million unemployed by the end of the century if the continent's competitiveness and employment patterns are not rapidly changed. ... Europe's economic performance against America and Asia was declining and that the Community was faced with a choice between further decline and survival."

"What I see is European construction drifting towards a free-trade zone, that is to say an English-style Europe, which I reject. If we do nothing, this will lead in 15 years to a break-up. I reject a Europe that would be just a market, a free-trade zone without a soul, without a conscience, without political will, without a social dimension."

"[Greek voices] must not only be heard claiming their due but also contributing to the European Union."

"Politicians who attack the dream of a federal Europe are racist bigots intent on undermining the Continent's freedom and peace."

"What is perceived as a cost by some will turn out to be the competitive advantage of Europe by helping maintain a well-trained, secure workforce, open to change."

"I have a passion for reform, for the progress of man and society. I cannot stand the feeling of being useless."

"According to [John Major], the issue now is to build a greater Europe around a single market and some areas of co-operation, notably in the environment. Everything else is flexible. I call that Europe à la carte. This is not my thesis. Mine is: the fathers of the Treaty of Rome wanted not just peace among us, but also that Europe should be able to continue existing in a world in which they sensed profound change in the wind, without being able to describe it. In consequence, if we want our nations to keep their universal capacity together, they must unite politically, without nostalgia for the old order."

"The spirit of the Right is dominated by scepticism towards the possibility of profound change in society and above all towards the idea that man can achieve progress over himself. On the Left, on the other hand, there exists a belief in human and social progress."

"We have preserved social security and the welfare state, but at the expense of employment. Neo-liberalism, which put the emphasis on the market, manifested itself in Europe by the policies led by Margaret Thatcher, who sometimes had good reasons to prise off the shackles which were condemning British society to decline. But [Thatcherite policies] fell into an excess of laissez faire."

"[The European Union must be a] federal union with a common currency, a tightly co-ordinated economic policy and a foreign policy capable of common diplomatic and military action. ... Britain is refusing to face reality. Does England have a future outside Europe? No. But it is difficult for a great nation to bid farewell to its golden age."

"Socialism had defeated her brand of ultra-liberal economics. ... [Margaret Thatcher believed that] the law of the market could be applied in the place of politics. She underestimated the dignity and grandeur of politics, which is an attempt to combine, an attempt to convince, an attempt to listen to others, to try to find a society which is not better but less bad than the one in which we live today."

"[Only federalism] allows democratic control and can punish abuses of power. Only federalism can guarantee respect for national character and regional variety. ... The springtime of Europe is still before us."

"Europe needs an army to fight the resource wars of the twenty-first century."

"Up Yours Delors"

"I have five questions that I ask people who have power, and I recommend them to the House. If I see someone who is powerful, be it a traffic warden, Rupert Murdoch, the head of a trade union or a Member of Parliament, I ask myself these five questions: "What power have you got? Where did you get it? In whose interests do you exercise it? To whom are you accountable? How can we get rid of you?" That last question is crucial. We cannot get rid of Jacques Delors; we cannot get rid of the [European] Commission. We can get rid of a Government; but we cannot get rid of European legislation that a Government have entrenched during their period in office—be they a Labour Government with the Tories coming or the other way around."

"At the very moment the eastern bloc disintegrated, the EEC mooted a major step in the opposite direction. The commission’s head, Jacques Delors, proposed in 1990 that the EEC become an executive agent of the European Parliament, with the currently sovereign Council of Ministers as merely its senate. This would drastically increase the unelected commission’s authority and diminish national sovereignty. It was constitutionally–not to mention politically–explosive. The EU was becoming a state without a nation. Britain’s Thatcher reacted in the House of Commons, ‘No, no, no!’ She later added, ‘We have not successfully rolled back the frontiers of the state in Britain only to see them reimposed at a European level, with a European superstate exercising a new dominance from Brussels.’ The Delors initiative won little support and was scrapped, but Thatcher’s days were numbered. In November 1990 she was felled by a party coup and replaced by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, John Major."

"The President of the Commission, M. Delors, said at a press conference the other day that he wanted the European Parliament to be the democratic body of the Community, he wanted the Commission to be the Executive and he wanted the Council of Ministers to be the Senate. No. No. No."

"Everyone thinks they have the prettiest wife at home."

"What would I do if Alex wasn't around? I would have no one to keep me on my toes or to fight. So of course I am pleased he changed his mind. I enjoy our rivalry. It is good for Arsenal, good for Manchester United and good for both of us."

"I'm ready to take the blame for all the problems of English football if that is what he wants."

"He's out of order, disconnected with reality and disrespectful. When you give success to stupid people, it makes them more stupid sometimes and not more intelligent."

"Any man who concentrates his energies totally on one passion is, by definition, someone who hurts the people close to him."

"No matter how much money you earn, you can only eat three meals a day and sleep in one bed."

"As a non-Arsenal player I would say Ryan Giggs is my Premier League player of the decade because he has combined style with winning. Also I feel sorry he could never attend the World Cup, somewhere where people get a lot of compliments when they do well."

"He's like a PlayStation. I think he can take advantage of every mistake you make. Barcelona are a very good side but of course they have Messi who can make the difference at any moment in the game. He is very young but he can achieve a lot. There are not many players who can score four goals like he did. He has six or seven great years ahead of him and he can become unbelievable."

"Everybody has a different opinion in this league and nobody is a prophet. I personally don’t know who will win the league. I managed 1,600 games so, if Nani knows, he must be 1,600 times more intelligent than I am."

"You ask me: 'Was he a fair player?' I say: 'No, I'm sorry, for me he was not a fair player.' I just think I respect him highly as a quality player. I did not like some things he did on the football pitch and I have the right to say that. It's not because you are older, suddenly, that you are a saint."

"We were considering him (Ruud van Nistelrooy) and Francis Jeffers and, in the end, we went for Jeffers."

"It's like you wanting to marry Miss World and she doesn't want you, what can I do about it? I can try to help you, but if she does not want to marry you what can I do?"

"Despite the global warming, England is still not warm enough for him."

"This guy should never play football again. What is he doing on the football pitch? I've gone along with the idea for a long time that to stop Arsenal, you have to kick Arsenal. I knew that was coming for a long time now."

"Spare me the articles about how nice Shawcross is because that was a horrendous tackle. People say we don’t fancy the physical side of it, but this is the result. If you see a player getting injured like that, it’s not acceptable."

"You weren't world class when Arsenal signed you."

"Nobody will finish above us in the league. It wouldn't surprise me if we were to go unbeaten for the whole of the season."

"I am still hopeful we can go through the season unbeaten - a frightening thought."

"We do not buy superstars. We make them."

"The background looks like a lot of red cards."

"When you're dealing with someone who only has a pair of underpants on, if you take his underpants off, he has nothing left - he's naked. You're better off trying to find him a pair of trousers to complement him rather than change him."

"If I give you a good wine, you will see how it tastes and after you ask where it comes from."

"Gérard [Houllier's] thoughts on the matter echo mine. He thinks that what the national coaches are doing is like taking the car from his garage without even asking permission. They will then use the car for ten days and abandon it in a field without any petrol left in the tank. We then have to recover it, but it is broken down. Then a month later they will come to take your car again, and for good measure you're expected to be nice about it."

"If I go into a season and I say, ‘For fuck’s sake, if we don’t win anything, they will all leave,’ I have already lost. The problem of the media is always to imagine the worst. The problem of the manager is always to imagine the best."

"What is unbelievable is that I am in a position where people reproach me for making a profit. The people who lose money – nobody says a word. Reproach the people who lose money. I do business by managing in a safe way in a healthy way and on top of that you reproach me for making money. It looks like we are in a business where the quality is to lose money."

"In my job, you expect to suffer. That's why when I go to hell one day, it will be less painful for me than you, because I'm used to suffering."

"Going back in time, looking back is just as scary. […] there’s not as much to come as what has already been lived… The only way to fight time is to not look back too much. If you do, it can make you feel anxious and guilty."

"In England, football is important for everybody."

"When I first came to Arsenal, I realised the back four were all university graduates in the art of defending. As for Tony Adams, I consider him to be a doctor of defence. He is simply outstanding."

"Fair play is an English word. It is not a French word, and it has been copied all over the world. Unfortunately, it does not function any more here."

"Of the nine red cards this season we probably deserved half of them."

"When you are a player, you think, 'Me! Me! Me!' When you are a manager, you think 'You! You! You!'"

"My job is to give people who work hard all week something to enjoy on Saturdays and Wednesdays."

"Politically, I am for efficiency. Economically first. Until the 1980s the world was divided into two, people were either communist or capitalist. The communist model does not work economically, we all realised that, but the capitalist model in the modern world also looks to be unsustainable. You cannot ignore individual interests, but I believe the world evolves slowly. The last 30 years have brought a minimum amount of money for everybody in the west, the next step, politically, would be a maximum amount of money earned by everybody."

"I want to go to the end of my job here. I built this team, I want to deliver with this team and I feel if I left I would have in some way betrayed my own beliefs. It is as simple as that. It was nothing to do with what Real Madrid has done. It was about Arsenal. I have a project here that I started three or four years ago and I want to reach the end of it. I could not leave this team at this stage of their development."

"OK, I’m not against that [spending £100m]. If you have the money and you find the one player who can make you win and make the difference, no matter how expensive he is you should do it. But there are not many players in the world who will make a real difference."

"At the end of the day, I ask you: who is the most successful team in the world? Brazil. What do they play? Good football. Who won everything last year? Barcelona. What do they play? Lovely football. I am not against being pragmatic because to be pragmatic is to make a good pass, not a bad pass. It is as simple as that. When I see Barcelona, to me it is art."

"I told you last week that the race was not over when the bookmakers stopped betting. Surprise, surprise, they have started taking money again."

"If you eat caviar every day it's difficult to return to sausages."

"We wanted tonight to be a shift of power, and to take the trophy back to Highbury."

"I was surprised by the resources they find. They are amazing. It doesn't get any worse than losing a Champions League game the way we did, but I felt the way they responded was absolutely magnificent."

"We've been remarkably consistent, haven't lost a game and we have played stylish football. We have entertained people who just love football."

"It's like a child who is used to having ice cream whenever he wants. When it doesn't come when he asks he tends to get confused and nervous."

"The speed at which we moved the ball in small spaces and our quality was superb. We played the ball through needles and it was very difficult for Aston Villa."

"The penalty decision was Old Traffordish."

"You ask 100 people, 99 will say it's very bad and the 100th will be Mark Hughes."

"I liked the pitch, I liked the referee, I did not like Paul Scholes' tackles."

"I feel Bolton played a cup game today, they were one week late."

"You forget what you wrote last September, October, November. You have a little bit of Alzheimer's."

"If happiness is liking the life one lives, I can say I have been happy, and still am."

"They [Chelsea] are a financially doped club. They have enhancement of performances through financial resources which are unlimited. It puts pressure on the market that is not very healthy. They can go to Steven Gerrard or Rio Ferdinand and say ‘how much do you earn? We’ll give you twice as much’. I don’t know if there is anything we can do to stop it."

"For managers such big scores don’t have any meaning, whether you win 5-0 or you lose 5-0. You’re elated (with such a victory) but ‘footballistically’ it does not show the real difference between teams."

"We need a player who will be a fox in the box and on the pitch. We need a player like Owen is for Liverpool."

"Over the years we enjoyed some fantastic battles and you could say we had survived together and respected each other's efforts to play good football. I always enjoy watching Arsène's sides - Arsenal play the right way. Playing against them always presented special challenges that I burned many hours over the years thinking about. He has always been a conscientious member of our trade who makes it his business to help other managers. Perhaps the biggest compliment I could give Arsène is that I could never be anything other than competitive with my rival for 17 years."

"Arsène has undoubtedly been one of the biggest influences on the modern-day Premiership. His 10 years at Arsenal have flown by, and there haven't been too many bad times. It was an absolute pleasure to play under him and I'm sure the players who are currently in the squad would agree."

"Arsène made Arsenal what they are today, and the fans understand it perfectly. If he was to leave tomorrow, he would do it with his head up, not by the back door."

"I think he is one of these people who is a voyeur. He likes to watch other people. There are some guys who, when they are at home, they have a big telescope to see what happens in other families. He speaks and speaks and speaks about Chelsea."

"Arsène's shadow has cast a gloom all the way up Seven Sisters Road [which leads to Tottenham] for quite a while now. I and the vast majority of Arsenal fans have an enormous amount of faith in Wenger."

"I rate Wenger – he's a very polite, well-mannered man, not forceful, though but sometimes you have to be a bit of a ruthless bastard."

"Arsène Wenger is the best manager Arsenal have ever had, and one of the top three or four in top-flight British football history (along with Shankly, Clough and Ferguson)."

"When I think of Arsène Wenger, I think of Warren Buffett. Wenger runs his football club like he is going to own the club for 100 years."

"I think the job he has done at Arsenal makes him without question their most successful manager, even above people like [Herbert] Chapman."

"There was a debate about Wenger on Sky and how crazy is that? People are actually getting interviewed saying he shouldn't be doing this. What that man's done for English football is amazing and will be remembered in 25, 50, 100 years' time. Will those on telly yesterday be remembered for what they've achieved? None whatsoever."

"I've ripped it to pieces; your portrait, you know. I tried to work on it this morning, but it went from bad to worse, so I destroyed it.."

"Don't you think your Corot [to Guilemet the painter] is a little short on temperament? I'm painting a portrait of Vallabreque; the highlight on the nose is pure vermilion [remark of Cezanne ca. 1860]"

"He (the painter Manet) hits of the tone.. ..but his work lacks unity and temperament too. (ca. 1863)"

"At Aix () I am not free; whenever I want to return to Paris, I always have to put up a fight, and, although your (his father) opposition may not be absolute, I am always deeply affected by the resistance that I encounter from you. I sincerely want my liberty unfettered.. ..it would give me great pleasure to work in the Midi, some aspects of which offer many resources to the painter; there I would be able to attack some of the problems that I wish to solve."

"Listen, monsieur Vollard, I worked a lot out of doors at . Except for that there was no other event of importance in my life during the years 1870-71. I divided my time between the field and the studio... Zola closed his letter by urging me to come back to Paris too [in 1872 Cézanne went back to Paris].. ..but all the same, something told me to go back to Paris. It was too long since I had seen the Louvre. But understand, Monsieur Vollard, I was working at that time on a landscape which was not going well. So I stayed at Aix a little while longer to study on my canvas."

"If I dared, I should say that your [ Camille Pissarro ] letter is imprinted with sadness. The picture business isn't going well; I fear that your morale may be colored a little grey, but I'm sure that it's only a passing phase.. .I imagine that you would be delighted with the country where I am now.. ..in , by the sea. I haven't been in Aix for a month. I've started two little motifs of the sea, for Monsieur [Victor] Chocquet [one of them became his later painting 'The Sea at ', who had talked to me about it. It's like a playing card. Red roofs against the blue sea. If the weather turns favorable perhaps I'll be able to finish them off."

"But there are motifs that would need three or four months' work, which could be done, as the vegetation doesn't change here. There are the olive trees and the pines that always keep their leaves. The sun is so fierce that objects seem to be silhouetted, not only in black or white, but in blue, red, brown, violet. I may be wrong, but this seems to be the very opposite of 'modeling'. How happy the gentle landscapists of Auvers would be here, and that [con, or 'bastard'?] Guillemet."

"I had the company of monsieur Gibert. Such people see clearly, but they have the teacher's eye. As the train was taking us past Alexis' place a staggering subject for a picture came into view towards the east: St-Victoire [later Cezanne made series of paintings of Mont St. Victoire and the crags above Beaurecueil]. I said, 'What a splendid subject'; he replied, 'The lines are too symmetrical'. Referring to 'L'Assommoir' [a novel of Emile Zola ] about which, incidentally, he was the first person to speak to me, he said some very sound things, and praised it, but always from the point of view of technique."

"I saw Monet and Renoir at about the end of December; they had been on holiday in Genoa, in Italy."

"You positively paint like a madman."

"I was very pleased with myself when I discovered that sunlight could not be reproduced; it had to be represented by something else.. ..by colour."

"You wretch! [Cezanne is portraying the art dealer Vollard who changed his pose during the painter session] You've spoiled the pose. Do I have to tell you again you must sit like an apple? Does an apple move?"

"..that distinguished aesthete [ Gustave Moreau,] famous artist and art teacher in Paris, then] who paints nothing than rubbish, it is because his dreams are suggested not by the inspiration of Nature, but by what he has seen in the museums.. .I should like to have that good man under my wing, to point out to him the doctrine of a development of art by contact with Nature. It's so sane, so comforting, the only just conception of art."

"..' (large and famous painting of Dutch 17th century painter Rembrandt.. ..the grandiose - I don't say it in bad part - grows tiresome after a while. There are mountains like that; when you stand before them you shout Nom de Dieu, but for every day a simple little hill does well enough. Listen Monsieur Vollard, if the 'Raft of the Medusa' of Théodore Géricault hung in my bedroom, it would make me sick."

"Everybody's going crazy over the Impressionists; what art needs is a Poussin made over according to nature. There you have it in a nutshell."

"Wouldn't it be wonderful to paint a nude here? [along the river near Aix ] There are innumerable motifs here on the banks of the river; the same spot viewed from a different angle offers a subject of the utmost interest. It is so varied that I think I could keep busy for months without changing my place, simply turning now tot the right and now to the left."

"Painting certainly means more to me than everything else in the world. I think my mind becomes clearer when I am in the presence of nature. Unfortunately, the realization of my sensations is always a very painful process with me. I can't seem to express the intensity which beats in upon my senses. I haven't at my command the magnificent richness of color which enlivens Nature.. .Look at that cloud; I should like to be able to paint that! Monet could. He had muscle."

"Anyone who wants to paint should read Bacon. He defined the artists as homo additus naturae.. .Bacon had the right idea, but listen Monsieur Vollard, speaking of nature, the English philosopher, [Bacon] didn't for-see our open-air school, nor that other calamity which has followed close upon its heels: open-air indoors."

"You can't ask a man to talk sensibly about the art of painting if he simply doesn't know anything about it. But by God, how can he [ Zola, his childhood friend who characterized Cezanne in L'Oeuvre] dare to say that a painter is done because he has painted one bad picture? When a picture isn't realized, you pitch it in the fire and start another one."

"I work obstinately, and once in a while I catch a glimpse of the Promised Land. Am I to be like the great leader of the Hebrews, or will I really attain unto it?. .I have a large studio in the country. I can work better there than in the city. I have made some progress. Oh, why so late and so painful? Must art indeed be a priesthood, demanding that the faithful be bound to it body and soul?"

"This is what happens, unquestionably – I am positive: an optical sensation is produced in our visual organ, which leads us classify as light, half-tone or quarter-tone, the planes represented by sensations of color. [Thus the light does not exist for the painter]. As long as, inevitably, one proceeds from black to white, the former of these abstractions being a kind of point of rest both for eye and brain, we flounder about, we cannot achieve self-mastery, get possession of ourselves. During this period (I tend to repeat myself, inevitably) we turn to the admirable works [of the five great Venetian painters a. o. Titian and Tintoretto] handed down to us through the ages, in which we find comfort and support..."

"Allow me to repeat what I said when you were here: deal with nature by means of the cylinder, the sphere and the cone, all placed in perspective, so that each side of an object or a plane is directed towards a central point. Lines parallel to the horizon give breadth, a section of nature, or if you prefer, of the spectacle spread before our eyes by the 'Pater Omnipotens Aeterne Deus'. Lines perpendicular to that horizon give depth. But for us men, nature has more depth than surface, hence the need to introduce in our vibrations of light, represented by reds and yellows, enough blue tints to give a feeling of air."

"The point to be made clear is that, whatever may be our temperament, or our power in the presence of nature, we have to render what we actually see, forgetting everything that appeared before our own time. Which, I think, should enable the artist to express his personality to the full, be it large or small. Now that I am an old man, about seventy, the sensations of colour which produce light give rise to abstractions that prevent me from covering my canvas, and from trying to define the outlines of objects when their points of contact are tenuous and delicate; with the result that my image or picture is incomplete. For another thing, the planes become confused, superimposed; hence Neo-Impressionism (initiated by Seurat and Paul Signac, ed., where everything is outlined in black, an error which must be uncompromisingly rejected. And nature, if consulted, shows us how to achieve this aim."

"Alas! The memories that are swallowed up in the abyss of the years! I'm all alone now and I would never be able to escape from the self-seeking of human kind anyway. Now it's theft, conceit, infatuation, and now it's rapine or seizure of one's production. But Nature is very beautiful. They can't take that away from me. [in the last conversation Vollard had with Cezanne]"

"You must forgive me for continually coming back to the same thing; but I believe in the logical development of everything we see and feel through the study of nature and turn my attention to technical questions later."

"To my mind one does not put oneself in place of the past, one only adds a new link."

"As a painter I am beginning to see more clearly how to work from Nature.. .But I still can't do justice to the intensity unfolding before my eyes."

"I still work with difficulty, but I seem to get along. That is the important thing to me. Sensations form the foundation of my work, and they are imperishable, I think. Moreover, I am getting rid of that devil who, as you know, used to stand behind me and forced me at will to 'imitate'; he's not even dangerous any more. [one week later Cezanne died]"

"Painting from nature is not copying the object, it is realizing sensations."

"Yes, a bunch of carrots, observed directly, painted simply in the personal way one sees it, worth more than the Ecole's everlasting slices of buttered bread, that tobacco-juice painting, slavishly done by the book? The day is coming when a single original carrot will give birth to a revolution."

"Here you are, put this somewhere, on your work table. You must always have this before your eyes.. .It's a new order of painting. Our Renaissance starts here.. .There's a pictorial truth in things. This rose and this white lead us to it by a path hitherto unknown to our sensibility.."

"This will be my picture, the one I shall leave behind.. .But the center? Where is the center? I can't find the center.. .Tell me, what shall I group it all around? Ah, Poussin's arabesque! He knew all about that. In the London 'Bacchanal', in the Louvre 'Flora' (both are paintings of Poussin, admired by Cézanne), where does the line of the figures and the landscape begin, where does it finish.. ..It's all one. There is no center. Personally I would like something like a hole, a ray of light, an invisible sun to keep an eye on my figures, to bathe them, care them, intensify them.. ..in the middle [remark on one of his paintings https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/27/Paul_C%C3%A9zanne_-_Seven_Bathers_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg 'The Bathers']"

"See how the light tenderly love the apricots, it takes them over completely, enters into their pulp, light them from all sides! But it is miserly with the peaches and light only one side of them."

"Personally I would like to have pupils, a studio, pass on my love to them, work with them, without teaching them anything.. .A convent, a monastery, a phalanstery of painting where one could train together.. ..but no program, no instruction in painting.. ..drawing is still alright, it doesn't count, but painting – the way to learn is to look at the masters, above all at nature, and to watch other people painting.."

"Everything we look at disperses and vanishes. doesn't it? Nature is always the same, and yet its appearance is always changing.. .Painting must give us the flavour of nature’s eternity. Everything, you understand. So I join together nature's straying hands.. ..From all sides, here there and everywhere, I select colours, tones and shades; I set them down, I bring them together.. ..They make lines, they become objects – rocks, trees – without my thinking about them.. ..But if there is the slightest distraction, the slightest hitch, above all if I interpret too much one day, if I'm carried away today by a theory which contradicts yesterday's, if I think while I'm painting, if I meddle, then woosh!, everything goes to pieces."

"Art has a harmony which parallels that of nature. The people who tell you that the artist is always inferior to nature are idiots! He is parallel to it. Unless, of course, he deliberately intervenes. His whole aim must be silence. He must silence all the voices of prejudice within him, he must forget.. .And then the entire landscape will engrave itself on the sensitive plate of his being."

"Nature as it is seen and nature as it is felt, the nature that is there.. (he pointed towards the green and blue plain; J. G.) and the nature that is here (he tapped his forehead, J. G.) both of which have to fuse in order to endure, to live that life, half human and half divine, which is the life of art or, if you will .. the life of god. The landscape is reflected, humanized, rationalized within me. I objectivize it, project it, fix it on my canvas.."

"And art puts us, I believe, in a state of grace in which we experience a universal emotion in an, as it were, religious but in the same time perfectly natural way. General harmony, such as we find in colour, is located all around us."

"Colour is the place where our brain and the universe meet. That's why colour appears so entirely dramatic, to true painters. Look at Sainte-Victoire there [the hill, which Cézanne painted again and again] How it soars, how imperiously it thirsts for the sun!. .For a long time I was quite unable to paint Sainte-Victoire; I had no idea to go about it because, like others who just look at it, I imagined the shadow to be concave, whereas in fact it's convex, it disperses outward from the center. Instead of accumulating, it evaporates, becomes fluid, bluish, participating in the movements of the surrounding air. Just as over there to the right, on the Pilon du Roi, you can see the contrary effect, the brightness gently rocking to and fro, moist and shimmering. That's the sea.. ..That's one needs to depict. What one needs to know. That's the bath of experience, so to speak..."

"Alas, because I'm no longer innocent. We're civilized beings. Whether we like it or not, we have the cares and concerns of classical civilization in our bones. I want to express myself clearly when I paint. In people who feign ignorance there is a kind of barbarism even more detestable than the academic kind: it's no longer possible to be ignorant today. One no longer is. We come into the world armed with facility. Facility is the death of art and we must rid ourselves of it."

"In that Renaissance (Cellini, Tintoretto, Titian..) there was an explosion of unique truthfulness, a love of painting and form.. .Then come the Jesuits and everything is formal; everything has to be taught and learned. It required a revolution for nature to be rediscovered; for Delacroix to paint his beach at Etratat, Corot his roman rubble, Gustave Courbet his forest scenes and his waves. And how miserable slow that revolution was, how many stages it had to go through!.. .These artists had not yet discovered that nature has more to do with depth than with surfaces. I can tell you, you can do things to the surface.. ..but by going deep you automatically go to the truth. You feel a healthy need to be truthful. You'd rather strip your canvas right down than invent or imagine a detail. You want to know."

"..But there is better. Simplicity, being direct. Everything else is just a game, just building castles in the sky.. .Basically I don't think of anything when I paint. I see colours. I strive with joy to convey them on to my canvas just as I see them. They arrange themselves as they choose, any old way. Sometimes that makes a picture. I'm brainless animal. Very content if I could be just that.."

"Make others feel the same way about it. Without their realizing it! That's the meaning of art.. .Yes, what I'm aiming for is the logical development of what we see and feel when we observe nature; only then I'm concerned with the process, processes being for us no more than simple ways of getting the public to feel what we ourselves are feeling, and of making our point. The great artists we admire have done no more.. .Shall we have lunch?"

"..and wanting to force nature to say things, making trees twist and rocks frown, as Gustave Doré does, or even painting it like Leonardo da Vinci, that's literature too. There's logic of colour, damn it all! The painter owes allegiance to that alone. Never to the logic of the brain; if he abandons himself to that logic, he's lost.. .Painting is first and foremost an optical affair. The stuff of our art is there, in what our eyes are thinking.. .If you respect nature, it will always unravel its meaning for you."

"Colour, if I may say so, is biological. Colour is alive and colour alone makes things come alive.. .Without losing any part of myself, I need to get back to that instinct, so that these colours in the scattered fields signify an idea to me, just as to them they signify a crop. Confronted by a yellow, they spontaneously feel the harvesting activity required of them, just as I, when faced with the same ripening tint.."

"Treat nature in terms of the cylinder, the sphere, and the cone, the whole put into perspective so that each side of an object, or of a plane, leads towards a central point. Lines parallel to the horizon give breadth, whether a sections of nature, or, if you prefer, of the spectacle which Pater omnipotens aeterne Deus unfolds before your eyes. Lines perpendicular to this horizon give depth.. .Everything I am telling you [ Joachim Gasquet ] about - the sphere, the cone, cylinder, concave shadow – on mornings when I'm tired these notions of mine get me going, they stimulate me, I soon forget them once I start using my eyes."

"It's like Impressionism. They all do it at the Salons. Oh, very discreetly! I too was an Impressionist. I don't conceal the fact. Pissarro had an enormous influence on me. But I wanted to make out of Impressionism something solid and lasting like the art of the museums."

"But what an eye Monet has, the most prodigious eye since painting began! I raise my hat to him. As for Courbet, he already had the image in his eye, ready-made. Monet used to visit him, you know, in his early days.. .But a touch of green, believe me, is enough to give us a landscape, just as a flesh tone will translate a face for us.."

"That is why, perhaps, all of us derive Pissarro. He had the good luck to be born in the West Indies, where he learned how to draw without a teacher. He told me all about it. In 1865 he was already cutting out black, bitumen, raw sienna and the ocher's. That's a fact. Never paint with anything but the three primary colours and their derivatives, he used to say me. Yes, he was the first Impressionist."

"Monet's cliffs (at Etretat) will survive as a prodigious series, as will a hundred others of his canvases.. .He'll be in the Louvre, for sure, alongside Constable and Turner. Damn it, he's even greater. He painted the iridescence of the earth. He's painted water. Remember those Rouen cathedrals.. .But where everything slips away in these pictures of Monet's, nowadays we must insert a solidity, a framework.."

"Degas isn't enough of a painter; he doesn't have enough of that! With a little bit of temperament one can manage to be a painter, It's enough to have a sense of art, and that sense is no doubt what the bourgeoisie fear most.. .For a painter, sensation is at the bottom of everything. I will go on repeating it forever. Procedures are not what I advocate."

"Let's not eliminate nature. Too bad if we fail. You see, in his 'Dejeuner sur l'herbe', Manet ought to have added - I don't know what - a touch of this nobility, whatever it is in this picture that conveys heaven to our every sense. Look at the golden flow of the tall woman, the other one's back.. .They are alive and they are divine."

"Yes, yes, a formula that's a straitjacket.. ..not for me! All the same, he tries in vain, does Jean-Dominique [Ingres], to wring your heart with his glossy finish! I said this to Vollard, to shock him, he is very powerful! Nevertheless he [ Jean-Dominique Ingres, French classicist painter] is a damned good man.. .The most modern of the moderns. Do you know why I take my hat off to him? Because he forced his fantastic draughtsmanship down the throats of the idiots who now claim to understand it. But here there are only two: Delacroix and Courbet. The rest are scoundrels."

"He (Delacroix) turns David [French painter] upside down. His painting is iridescent. Seeing one Constable [famous English landscape painter, admired by French painters, then] is enough to make him understand all the possibilities of landscape, and he too sets up his easel by the sea.. .And he has a sense of human being, of life in movement, of warmth. Everything moves, every glistens. The light!.. .There is more warm light in this interior [probably: Delacroix's 'Woman of Algiers'] of his than in all of Corot's landscapes.."

"Maybe Delacroix stands for Romanticism. He stuffed himself with too much Shakespeare and Dante, thumbed through too much Faust. His palette is still the most beautiful in France, and I tell you no one under the sky had more charm and pathos combined than he, or more vibration of colour. We all paint in his language, as you all write in Hugo's."

"A builder. A rough and ready plasterer. A colour grinder. He Courbet is like a Roman bricklayer. And yet he's another true painter. There's no one in this century that surpasses him. Even though he rolls up his sleeves, plugs up his ears, demolishes columns, his workmanship is classical!.. .His view was always compositional. His vision remained traditional. Like his palette-knife, he used it only out of doors. He was sophisticated and brought his work to a high finish.. .His great contribution is the poetic introduction of nature - the smell of damp leaves, mossy forest cuttings - into nineteenth century painting; the murmur of rain, woodlands shadows, sunlight moving under trees. The sea. And snow, he painted snow like no one else!"

"That's my great ambition. To be sure! Every time I attack a canvas I feel convinced, I believe that something's going to come of it.. .But I immediately remember that I've always failed before. Then I taste blood.. .I never know where I am going or where I want to go with this damned profession. All the theories mess you up inside."

"Until the war [between France and Germany] as you know, my life was a mess. I wasted it. It was only at l'Estaque, when (1870-1871) I thought things over, that I really understood Pissarro, a painter like myself.. .He was a determined man. I was overcome by a passion for work. It wasn't that I hadn't been working before, I was always working. But what I always missed, you know, was a comrade like you.."

"I'd like to combine melancholy and sunshine.. .There's a sadness in Provence which no one has expressed; Poussin would have shown it in terms of some tomb, underneath the poplars of the Alyscamps.. .I'd like to put reason in the grass and tears in the sky, like Poussin.. .You really need to see and feel your subject very clearly, and then If I express myself with distinction and power, there's my Poussin, there's my classicism.."

"When I'am outlining the skin of a lovely peach with soft touches of paint, or a sad old apple, I catch a glimpse in the reflections they exchange of the same mild shadow of renunciation, the same love of the sun, the same recollection of the dew.. .Why do we divide up the world? Does this reflects our egoism?.. .The prism is our first step towards God, our seven beatitudes."

"Objects enter into each other.. .Chardin [French classical still-life painter] was the first to have glimpsed that and rendered the atmosphere of objects.. .Notice how a light transversal plane straddling the bridge of your nose makes the values more evident to the eye.. .Well, he noticed that before we did.. .He neglected nothing. He also perceived that whole encounter in the atmosphere of the tiniest particles, the fine dust of emotion that surrounds objects.."

"..in my ideal of a good painting; there's unity. The drawing and the colour are no longer distinct; as soon as you paint you draw; the more the colours harmonize, the more precise the drawing becomes. I know that from experience. When the colour is at its richest, the form is at its fullest."

"There is, in a apple, in a head, a culminating point, and this point - in spite of the effect, the tremendous effect: shadow or light, sensations of colour - is always the one nearest to the eye. The edge of objects recede to another point placed on your horizon. This is my great principle, my conviction, my discovery. The eye must concentrate, grasp the subject, and the brain will find a means to express it.."

"..he came to the motif twice a day [a snow scene of Auvers, Cézanne painted in the early 1870's], in the morning and the evening, in gray weather and in clear; it so happened that he often slaved away at a painting from one season to another, from one year to another, so that in the end the Spring of 1873 became the effect of snow."

"Like a voluptuous vision, this artificial corner of paradise has left even the most courageous gasping for breath... and Mr Cézanne merely gives the impression of being a sort of madman, painting in a state of delirium tremens."

"This Cézanne [Still life with Compotier, Fruit and Glass, c. 1879-1882], that you ask me for is a pearl of exceptional quality and I already have refused three hundred francs for it; it is one of my most treasured possessions, and except in absolute necessity, I would give up my last shirt before the picture."

"It was then [c. 1873], as I remember that Paul Cézanne began to paint with vertical divisions and Papa [his father, Camille Pissarro adopted the long brush to paint in little comma's. A peasant who had watched them side by side at Auvers, remarked that 'M. Pissarro at working, made little stabs at the canvas ('il piquait'), and M. Cézanne laid on the paint like plaster ('il plaquait'). [Cézanne's painting 'Small house at Auvers' is painted with some of these vertical divisions that Lucien [the son of Camille Pissarro, and later also a painter] noted then."

"..he [Cézanne] never ceased declaring that he was not making pictures, but that he was searching for a technique. Of that technique, each picture contained a portion successfully applied, like a correct phrase of a new language to be created."

"I hope that Cezanne will still be here and that he will join us, but he is so shy, so afraid of meeting new people, that I am afraid that he might let us down, even though he wants very much to meet you. How sad it is that this man hasn't had more patronage in his life! This is a true artist who has come to doubt himself far too much. He needs to be cheered up, so he was quite touched by your article."

"How does he Cézanne do it? He cannot put two touches of colour on a canvas without its being very good."

"It was because Cézanne could come at reality only through what he saw that he never invented purely abstract forms. Few great artists have depended more on the model. Every picture carried him a little further towards his goal—complete expression; and because it was not the making of pictures but the expression of his sense of the significance of form that he cared about, he lost interest in his work so soon as he had made it express as much as he had grasped. His own pictures were for Cézanne nothing but rungs in a ladder at the top of which would be complete expression. The whole of his later life was a climbing towards an ideal. For him every painting was a means, a step, a stick, a hold, a stepping-stone—something he was ready to discard as soon as it had served his purpose. He had no use for his own pictures. To him they were experiments. He tossed them into bushes, or left them in the open fields to be stumbling-blocks for a future race of luckless critics."

"The Impressionists were the first [painters] to reject the absolute value of the subject and to consider its value to be merely relative.. .In Paul Cezanne's letters I notice ideas like these: 'Objects must turn, recede, and live. I wish to make something lasting from impressionism, like the art in the museums'.. .'For an impressionist, to paint after nature is not to paint the object, but to express sensations'.. .'After having looked at the old masters, one must take haste to leave them and to verify in one’s self the instincts, the sensations that dwell in us.'"

"[E]very year [he] sent two canvases to the Salon. They were constantly refused, until, in 1882... one of his entries, a portrait, had... been accepted! Of course he got into the Salon by the back door. His friend Guillemet, who was serving on the jury, and who tried in vain to get Cézanne's canvas accepted on the second vote, had put it through pour sa charité for at the time every member of the jury had the privelage of taking into the Salon a canvas by one of his pupils, without any conditions. ...Later, in the interests of equality, the Jury was deprived of this privelage... But the painter was again to have the satisfaction of being represented in... the Universal Exposition of 1889. ...[H]ere again he was accepted through favoritism, or... by means of a "deal." The committee had importuned Monsieur Choquet to send them a... precious piece of furniture... but he made the formal condition that a canvas of Cézanne's should be exhibited... [T]he picture was "skyed" so [high] that none but the owner and the painter noticed it. No matter; imagine Cézanne's joy at seeing a picture of his actually hung once more!"

"Very few people ever had the opportunity to see Cézanne at work, because he could not endure being watched while at the easel. For one who has seen him paint, it is difficult to imagine how slow and painful his progress was on certain days. In my portrait there are two little spots of canvas on the hand which are not covered. I called Cézanne's attention to them. "If the copy I'm making in the Louvre turns out well," he replied, "perhaps I will be able tomorrow to find the exact tone to cover up those spots. Don't you see, Monsieur Vollard, that if I put something there by guesswork, I might have to paint the whole canvas over starting from that point?" The prospect made me tremble. During the period that Cézanne was working on my portrait, he was also occupied with a large composition of nudes, begun about 1895, on which he labored almost to the end of his life."

"[H]e was caught in a storm while working in the field. Only after having kept at it for two hours under a steady downpour did he start to make for home; but on the way he dropped exhausted. A passing laundry-wagon stopped, and the driver took him home. His old housekeeper came to the door. Seeing her master prostrate and almost lifeless, her first impulse was to run to him and give him every attention. But just as she was about to loosen his clothes, she stopped, seized with alarm. It must be explained that Cézanne could not endure the slightest physical contact. Even his son, whom he cherished above all... never dared to take his father's arm without saying, "Permit me, papa." And Cézanne, notwithstanding the affection he entertained for his son, could never resist shuddering. Finally, fearing lest he pass away if he did not have proper care, the good woman summoned all her courage and set about to chafe his arms and legs to restore circulation, with the result that he regained consciousness without making the slightest protest—which was indeed a bad sign. He was feverish all night long. On the following day he went down into the garden, intending to continue a study... In the midst of the sitting he fainted; the model called for help; they put him to bed, and he never left it again. He died a few days later, On October 22, 1906."

"When Cézanne laid a canvas aside, it was almost always with the intention of taking it up again, in the hope of bringing it to perfection."

"Cézanne made a cylinder out of a bottle. I start from the cylinder to create a special kind of individual object. I make a bottle — a particular bottle — out of a cylinder."

"No one will ever paint like Cezanne for example, because no one will ever have his peculiar visual gifts; or to put it less dogmatically, will anyone ever appear again with so peculiar and almost unbelievable a faculty for dividing color sensations and making logical realizations of them? Has anyone ever placed his color more reasonably with more of a sense of time and measure than he? I think not, and he furnished for the enthusiast of today new reasons for research into the realm of color for itself."

"It is not what the artist does that counts. But what he is. Cézanne would never have interested me if he had lived and thought like Jaques-Emile Blanche, even if the apple he had painted had been ten times more beautiful. What interests us is the anxiety of Cézanne, the teaching of Cézanne, the anguish of Van Gogh, in short the inner drama of the man. The rest is false. [Boisgeloup, winter 1934]."

"..[enabled] to touch the core, the essence of things. Even in as simple a subject, a great painter can achieve a majesty of vision and an intensity of feeling to which we immediately respond. [1937, referring to a still life by Cézanne and a river-sight with sandbank by Monet ]"

"..my favorite artist, when I first began to paint, was actually Cézanne. Later, between 1920 – 1930, I developed a great interest in Chardin [famous for his still-life], Vermeer and Corot, too.. ..that's why you have been able to detect in my works of between 1912 – 1916 some recognizable influences of the early Paris cubists and above all, of Cézanne."

"While he warned his friends to avoid the influence of Gauguin, van Gogh and the neo-impressionists, Cézanne liked to speak of his former comrades, praising Renoir and especially Monet, evoking with particular tenderness the "humble and colossal" Pissarro. When he was invited by a group of Aix artists to exhibit with them in 1902 and again in 1906, Cézanne—now over sixty and acclaimed by the new generation as their undisputed leader—piously affixed to his name: pupil of Pissarro. Pissarro never learned of this tribute..."

"Push answers with pull and pull with push.. .At the end of his life and the height of his capacity Paul Cézanne understood color as a force of push and pull. In his pictures he created an enormous sense of volume, breathing, pulsating, expanding, contracting through his use of colors."

"I was with Cézanne for a long time, and now naturally I am with Picasso."

"Cézanne's painting is strictly painting, and its value is immense; but Van Gogh's painting has the Outsider's characteristic: it is a laboratory refuse of a man who treated his own life as an experiment in living; it faithfully records moods and developments of vision on the manner of a Bildungsroman."

"The whole Renaissance tradition is antipathic to me. The hard-and-fast rules of perspective which it succeeded in imposing on art were a ghastly mistake which it has taken four centuries to redress; Paul Cézanne and after him Picasso and myself can take a lot of credit for this.. ..scientific perspective forces the objects in a picture to disappear away form the beholder instead of bringing them within his reach as painting should."

"..the light suggests no particular time of day or night [in the paintings of Cézanne]; it is not appropriated from morning or afternoon, sunlight or shadow."

"But I find, because of modern painting, that things which couldn't be seen in terms of painting, things you couldn't paint.. ..it is not that you paint them, bit is the connection. I imagine that Cézanne, when he painted a ginger pot with apples, must have been very grotesque in his day, because a still life was something set up of beautiful things. It may be very difficult, for instance, to put a Rheingold bottled beer on the table and a couple of glasses and a package of Lucky Strike [cigarets]. I mean, you know, there are certain things you cannot paint at a particular time, and it takes a certain attitude how to see those things, in terms of art."

"Artists have never worked with the model – just with the painting. What you [G. R. Swenson, the interviewer] are really saying is that an artist like Cézanne transforms what we think the painting ought to look like into something he thinks it ought to look like. He’s working with paint, not nature; he’s making a painting, he’s forming. I think my work is different from comic strips – but I wouldn't call it transformation; I don’t think that whatever is meant by it is important to art. What I do is form, whereas the comic strip is not formed in the sense I'm using the word; the comics have shapes but there has been no effort to make them intensely unified. The purpose is different, one intends to depict and I intend to unify."

"When I want to speak about why I am doing the same thing now, which is squares, for – how long? – 19 years. Because there is no final solution in any visual formulation. Although this may be just a belief on my part, I have some assurances that that is not the most stupid thing to do, through Cezanne whom I consider as one of the greatest painters. From Cézanne we have, so the historians tell us – 250 paintings of 'Mont St. Victoire'. But we know that Cézanne has left in the fields often more than he took home because he was disappointed with his work. So we may conclude he did many more than 250 of the same problem."

"Who we are and how we appear to the world is always filled with paradox. Being ourselves is like Cézanne painting a landscape — he who was always tentative, always questioning, never fully sure but always attempting to respond honestly to his 'little sensations' as he called them."

"Picasso is taking Cézanne's elements - the cone, cylinder and sphere - into Cubism. Matisse is taking Cézanne's interest in the wholeness and the clarity of figures. They're taking almost opposite interpretations of what they see in Cézanne: Picasso is understanding it as decomposition, and Matisse is understanding it as composition."

"[Matisse] worked his way through the different modes of vision employed in nineteenth-century avant-guard painting, starting with the impressionists and then moving on to Seurat, van Gogh, Gauguin, and especially Cézanne, who was to remain the greatest and longest-lasting source of inspiration to him. As early as 1899, Matisse made great sacrifices in order to buy a small but powerful Cézanne, Three Bathers, and he was the first of the younger avant-guard artists to absorb the radically new kind of pictorial thought that Cézanne's painting embodied. Cézanne was... Matisse said, "a sort of god of painting.""

"Cézanne paints solids, but we reach them beyond the canvas."

"It used to be agreed that painting was a visual, music an auditory art. R. G. Collingwood, in his brilliant The Principles of Art, goes on to tell how Cézanne came then, and began to paint like a blind man. His rooms are full of volumes: these tables, the people in these chairs are bulks which have been felt with the hands. These trees are not what trees look like, they are what trees feel like."

"Residues arise … naturally in several branches of analysis … . Their consideration provides simple and easy-to-use methods, which are applicable to a large number of diverse questions, and some new results … ."

"... très souvent les lois particulières déduites par les physiciens d'un grand nombre d'observations ne sont pas rigoureuses, mais approchées."

"There is no let up! No end to it! Accursed problems! Innumerable calculations. Endless fighting. Signs. Formulas. Theorems besetting me from dawn to dusk!"

"I am a Christian, that is, I believe in the divinity of Christ, as did Tycho Brahe, Copernicus, Descartes, Newton, Fermat, Leibniz, Pascal, Grimaldi, Euler, Guldin; Boscovich, Gerdil, as did all the great astronomers, physicist and geometricians of past ages."

"As translated by Julio Antonio Gonzalo (2008). The Intelligible Universe: An Overview of the Last Thirteen Billion Years. World Scientific. p. 301."

"I am a sincere Catholic as it were Corneille, Racine, La Bruyère, Bossnet, Bourdaloue, Fènelon, as were and still are so many of the most of the honor of out science, philosophy and literature, and have conferred such brilliant ustre on our Academies. I share the deep conviction openly manifested in words, deeds and writings by so many savants of the first rank, by a Ruffini, a Haüy, a Laënnec, an Ampere, a Pelletier, a Freycinet, a Coriolis and I avoid naming any of those living, for fear of paining their podesty. I may at least be allowed to say that I loved to recognize all the noble generosity of the Christian Faith in my illustrious friends the creator of Crystallography (Haüy), the introducers of quinine and stethoscope (Pelletier and Laënnec), the famous voyager on board of the 'Urania', and the immortal founders of the theory of Dynamic Electricity (Frencinet and Ampère)."

"Ceux-là qui aiment à se faire craindre, craignent de se faire aimer, et eux-mêmes craignent plus que tous les autres; car les autres ne craignent qu'eux, mais eux craignent tous les autres."

"When your heart roams or gets distracted lead it back very gently, softly putting it close to its Master; and even if you spend your whole hour doing nothing except gathering up your heart quite calmly and putting it close to Our Lord, and even if your heart does nothing except turn away as soon as you have led it back, your hour will have been very well spent"

"There are no galley-slaves in the royal vessel of divine love—every man works his oar voluntarily!"

"You learn to speak by speaking, to study by studying, to run by running, to work by working ; and just so you learn to love God and man by loving. All those who think to learn in any other way deceive themselves."

"Have patience with every one, but especially with yourself."

"A heart-memory is better than a mere head-memory. Better to carry away a little of the love of Christ in our souls, than if we were able to repeat every word of every sermon we ever heard."

"De quoi sert-il de bastir des chasteaux en Espagne puisqu’il faut habiter en France?"

"È innanzitutto certo che in tutta la Sacra Scrittura non si troverà mai traccia della Chiesa attuale intesa come una società invisibile; ne esporrò qui, con la massima fedeltà, le ragioni. Gesù Cristo, nostro Redentore e Maestro, per ogni difficoltà o dissenso – sia di dottrina che di morale – ci rimanda sempre alla santa Chiesa per ottenerne l’infallibile soluzione. San Paolo insegna a Timoteo come i cristiani debbano vivere concretamente nella Chiesa. Egli stesso fece convocare gli anziani della chiesa asiatica, mostrando loro come fossero stati costituiti dallo Spirito Santo per reggere la Chiesa. Egli stesso, infine, fu inviato dalla Chiesa insieme a San Barnaba Egli stesso fu inviato dalla Chiesa insieme a San Barnaba e da quelle stesse chiese fu ricevuto per confermarle e per ordinarvi i sacri pastori, i vescovi e i sacerdoti. Ora, come si potrebbe riferire tutto questo a una Chiesa invisibile e immaginaria? E dove mai avrebbe potuto trovare una simile chiesa per presentarvi ricorsi giudiziari, per viverci e per governarla?"

"We accuse our neighbours for minor things, and excuse ourselves for major ones."

"Since we live in the world, we must follow the laws of the world in everything that is not sinful"

"Cor ad cor loquitur."

"What we do for others always seems like a lot, what others do for us seems like nothing."

"Madam, this desire [for holiness] must be in you like the orange trees of the Genoese Riviera, which, for almost the entire year, are laden with fruit, flowers and leaves at the same time."

"The damned are in the abyss of Hell, as within a woeful city, where they suffer unspeakable torments, in all their senses and members, because as they have employed all their senses and their members in sinning, so shall they suffer in each of them the punishment due to sin."

"Make friends with the angels, who though invisible are always with you.... Often invoke them, constantly praise them, and make good use of their help and assistance in all your temporal and spiritual affairs."

"Car l'amitié est un amour mutuel, & s'il n'est mutuel, ce n'est pas amitié."

"It is the mark of a mean, vulgar and ignoble spirit to dwell on the thought of food before meal times or worse to dwell on it afterwards, to discuss it and wallow in the remembered pleasures of every mouthful. Those whose minds dwell before dinner on the spit, and after on the dishes, are fit only to be scullions."

"The elephant, not only the largest but the most intelligent of animals, provides us with an excellent example. It is faithful and tenderly loving to the female of its choice, mating only every third year and then for no more than five days, and so secretly as never to be seen, until, on the sixth day, it appears and goes at once to wash its whole body in the river, unwilling to return to the herd until thus purified. Such good and modest habits are an example to husband and wife."

"Experto crede: aliquid amplius invenies in silvis, quam in libris. Ligna et lapides docebunt te, quod a magistris audire non possis."

"Liberavi animam meam."

"Bestia illa de Apocalypsi, cui datum est os loquens blasphemias, et bellum gerere cum sanctis (Apoc. XIII, 5-7), Petri cathedram occupat, tanquam leo paratus ad praedam."

"Non est jam dicere, "Ut populus, sic sacerdos"; quia nec si populus, ut sacerdos."

"Qui se sibi magistrum constituit, stulto se discipulum subdit."

"Vulgo dicitur: Quod non videt oculus, cor non dolet."

"Qui me amat, amat et canem meam."

"Ego addo et de pertinacia Græcorum, qui nobiscum sunt, et nobiscum non sunt, juncti fide, pace divisi, quanquam et in fide ipsa claudicaverint a semitis rectis."

""My burden is light," said the blessed Redeemer, a light burden indeed, which carries him that bears it. I have looked through all nature for a resemblance of this, and seem to find a shadow of it in the wings of a bird, which are indeed borne by the creature, and yet support her flight towards heaven."

"The faith of simplicity is mocked, the secrets of Christ profaned, questions on the highest things are impertinently asked, the Fathers scorned because they were disposed to conciliate rather than solve such problems. Human reason is snatching everything to itself, leaving nothing for faith. It falls upon things which are beyond it...desecrates sacred things more than clarifies them. It does not unlock mysteries and symbols, but tears them asunder; it makes nought of everything to which it cannot gain access and disdains to believe all such things."

"Prostrate, see Thy cross I grasp, And Thy pierced feet I clasp; Gracious Jesus, spurn me not; On me, with compassion fraught, Let Thy glances fall. From thy cross of agony, My Beloved, look on me; Turn me wholly unto Thee; "Be thou whole," say openly, "I forgive thee all.""

"Our King [Jesus] is accused of treachery; it is said of him [by the Muslims] that he is not God, but that he falsely pretended to be something he was not."

"Obey your bishop! “Obey those set over you [Heb 13:17],” the teachers of the Church…. I remind you, my dear friends, of what I said when I was with you: do not receive any outside or unknown preacher, unless he be sent by your bishop or preaches with the permission of the pope. For “how shall they preach unless they are sent [Rom 10:15]?”"

"Do what Jesus says,... what he commands through his ministers who are in the Church [see 1 Cor 6:4]. Be subject to his vicars, your leaders, not only those who are gentle and kind, but even those who are overbearing [see 1 Pt 2:18]."

"It’s not as if grace did one half of the work and free choice the other; each does the whole work, in its own peculiar contribution. Grace does the whole work, and so does free choice – with this one qualification: That whereas the whole is done in free choice, so is the whole done of grace."

"I rejoiced so greatly when I heard of your answer in the case of some who seemed to be filled with extravagant ambition for the office of legate, and to hope for it with impudence, even more than I can say. And not only I but all who love your name rejoiced with exceeding great joy. Moreover, when I read your letter written in the cause of the Church of Rodez, then was my mouth filled with laughter and my tongue with joy. Such things as these are worthy of your Apostleship, they honour the highest See, they are just what is becoming to the Bishop of the world. Whence, also, I bow my knees to the Author of your unique Primacy... In truth, you have been raised to this chair for the fall and rising again of many."

"Among us on the earth there is His memory; but in the Kingdom of heaven His very Presence. That Presence is the joy of those who have already attained to beatitude; the memory is the comfort of us who are still wayfarers, journeying towards the Fatherland."

"The reason for loving God is God Himself; and the measure of our love for Him is to love Him without measure."

"I would count him blessed and holy to whom such rapture has been vouchsafed in this mortal life, for even an instant to lose thyself, as if thou wert emptied and lost and swallowed up in God, is no human love; it is celestial. But if sometimes a poor mortal feels that heavenly joy for a rapturous moment, then this wretched life envies his happiness, the malice of daily trifles disturbs him, this body of death weighs him down, the needs of the flesh are imperative, the weakness of corruption fails him, and above all brotherly love calls him back to duty. Alas! that voice summons him to re-enter his own round of existence; and he must ever cry out lamentably, ‘O Lord, I am oppressed: undertake for me’ (Isa. 38.14); and again, ‘O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?’ (Rom. 7.24)Seeing that the Scripture saith, God has made all for His own glory (Isa. 43.7), surely His creatures ought to conform themselves, as much as they can, to His will. In Him should all our affections center, so that in all things we should seek only to do His will, not to please ourselves. And real happiness will come, not in gratifying our desires or in gaining transient pleasures, but in accomplishing God’s will for us: even as we pray every day: ‘Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven’ (Matt. 6.10). O chaste and holy love! O sweet and gracious affection! O pure and cleansed purpose, thoroughly washed and purged from any admixture of selfishness, and sweetened by contact with the divine will! To reach this state is to become deified. As a drop of water poured into wine loses itself, and takes the color and savor of wine; or as a bar of iron, heated red-hot, becomes like fire itself, forgetting its own nature; or as the air, radiant with sun-beams, seems not so much to be illuminated as to be light itself; so in the saints all human affections melt away by some unspeakable transmutation into the will of God. For how could God be all in all, if anything merely human remained in man? The substance will endure, but in another beauty, a higher power, a greater glory. When will that be? Who will see, who possess it? ‘When shall I come to appear before the presence of God?’ (Ps. 42.2). ‘My heart hath talked of Thee, Seek ye My face: Thy face, Lord, will I seek’ (Ps. 27.8). Lord, thinkest Thou that I, even I shall see Thy holy temple?"

"What of the souls already released from their bodies? We believe that they are overwhelmed in that vast sea of eternal light and of luminous eternity"

"Impassibilis est Deus, sed non incompassibilis."

"Sunt namque qui scire volunt eo fine tantum ut sciant; et turpis curiositas est. Et sunt qui scire volunt, ut sciantur ipsi; et turpis vanitas est. ... Et sunt item qui scire volunt, ut scientiam suam vendant, verbi causa, pro pecunia, pro honoribus; et turpis quaestus est. Sed sunt quoque qui scire volunt, ut aedificent; et caritas est. Et item qui scire volunt, ut aedificentur; et prudentia est."

"Look at those detractors. Look at those dogs. They ridicule us for baptizing infants, praying for the dead, and asking the prayers of the saints. They lose no time in cutting Christ off from all kinds of people to both sexes, young and old, living and dead. They put infants outside the sphere of grace because they are too young to receive it, and those who are full grown because they find difficulty in preserving chastity. They deprive the dead of the help of the living, and rob the living of the prayers of the saints because they have died. God forbid! The Lord will not forsake his people who are as the sands of the sea, nor will he who redeemed all be content with a few, and those heretics...."

"It is difficult now to look back across the centuries and appreciate the tremendous impact of his personality on all who knew him. The fire of his eloquence has been quenched in the written words that survive. As a theologian and a controversialist he now appears rigid and a little crude and unkind. But from the day in 1115 when, at the age of twenty-five, he was appointed Abbot of Clairvaux, till his death nearly forty years later he was the dominant influence in the religious and political life of western Europe."

"There were some men whose genius and virtues would have adorned any age. Among these was... Bernard of Clairvaux (1091-1153), whose pen was to control Christendom for a generation, and whose sainthood shines through all ages, was in the nursery when the soldiers of the cross started for the East. There were noble women, too. Bernard owed much of his talent and virtue to his mother, Aletta, whose memory is the imperishable ornament of womanhood. ...The intellectuality of this period exercised itself almost entirely with theological and religious subjects. Men in seclusion elaborated and defended existing church doctrines and gave pious flight to their imaginations. But of literature as such there was none; even the Troubadours had not begun to rhyme the Provencal tongue. The hot breath of the crusades themselves forced the debris of the Latin to send out its first flowers of poesy."

"From the days of Charlemagne it had been the custom to signalize entrance upon manhood by buckling about the loins the sword, the investment with "virile arms." The church, in hopeless inability to check the universal passion for fight, sought only to direct it to the suppression of ecclesiastical enemies. ...Bernard, without dispute the holiest man of the twelfth century, offered no excuse or palliation for his harangue to the faithful. "Let them kill the enemy or die. To submit to die for Christ, or to cause one of His enemies to die, is naught but glory.""

"The church steadily compacted its power about thrones and people. The authority of the Papacy was especially augmented in this period by its temporary success against a movement whose ultimate triumph was destined to cost the Roman Church its dominance of Christendom, viz., the impulse towards liberal thought. The standard-bearer of this essential Protestantism was Abelard. This astute reasoner placed the human judgment, when guided by correct scholarship, above all traditional authority. The popularity of his teaching was a serious menace to the doctrines of the church, so far as these rested upon the dictation of the popes. The consternation of ecclesiastics was voiced by Bernard, the Abbot of Clairvaux who declared, in his appeal to Pope Innocent II: "These books of Abelard are flying abroad over all the world; they no longer shun the light; they find their way into castles and cities; they pass from land to land, from one people to another. A new gospel is promulgated, a new faith is preached. Disputations are held on virtue and vice not according to Christian morality, on the sacraments of the church not according to the rule of faith, on the mystery of the Trinity not with simplicity and soberness. This huge Goliath, with his armor-bearer, Arnold of Brescia, defies the armies of the Lord to battle." The Goliath fell, but by no pebble from the sling of a David."

"Bernard was justly reputed the greatest mind of the age. He hesitated to enter into a learned controversy with Abelard, but smote him with a thunderbolt of excommunication, which he secured from the hands of the occupant of the Vatican throne."

"It was while the papal territory in Italy was... occupied by the adherents of Arnold that the second crusade [1145–1149] was inaugurated. Bernard, Abbot of Clairvaux, was its chief inspirer, both in counsel with the leaders of Europe and with his voice as its popular herald. High above generals and scholars, beyond kings, emperors, and popes, this man stands in the gaze of history. His repute for wisdom and sanctity was extended by miracles accredited to his converse with Heaven. Believed to be above earthly ambition, he commanded and rebuked with a celestial authority. Papal electors came to consult the monk before they announced their judgment as to who should be Pope, and when on the throne, the Pope consulted the monk before he ventured to set the seal of his infallibility to his own utterances. Bernard's humility may have been great Godward, but it was not of the sort to lead him to decline the solemn sovereignty of men's minds and wills."

"When Henry I of England hesitated to acknowledge Innocent II, Bernard's choice for Pope, on the ground that he was not the rightful occupant of the holy see, the monk exclaimed, "Answer thou for thy other sins; let this be on my head.""

"When Lothaire of Germany demanded of the Holy Father the renewal of the right of imperial investitures, the saint threw his spell about the emperor and left him submissive at the feet of the pontiff."

"When Louis VII of France, in his rage against Thibaut, Count of Champagne, carried devastation through the count's domains and burned the church of Vitry, with thirteen hundred of its citizens who had there taken refuge against his vengeance, Bernard openly rebuked the king, and with such effect that the monarch proposed, as a self-inflicted penance, a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, there to wipe out his guilt in the blood of Moslems. In this purpose of Louis VII originated the second crusade."

"Pope Honorius delegated Bernard to preach throughout France and Germany the renewal of the holy war. Drawn as much by the fame of the monk as by the mandates of the king and the Pope, a vast assembly of prelates and nobles gathered at Vézelay in Burgundy. A large platform was erected on a hill outside the city. King and monk stood together, representing the combined will of earth and heaven. The enthusiasm of the assembly of Clermont in 1095, when Peter the Hermit and Urban II launched the first crusade, was matched by the holy fervor inspired by Bernard as he cried, "O ye who listen to me! Hasten to appease the anger of heaven, but no longer implore its goodness by vain complaints. Clothe yourselves in sackcloth, but also cover yourselves with your impenetrable bucklers. The din of arms, the danger, the labors, the fatigues of war, are the penances that God now imposes upon you. Hasten then to expiate your sins by victories over the Infidels, and let the deliverance of the holy places be the reward of your repentance." As in the olden scene, the cry "Deus vult! Deus vult!" rolled over the fields, and was echoed by the voice of the orator: "Cursed be he who does not stain his sword with blood.""

"The king set the example by prostrating himself at the feet of the monk and receiving from his hands the badge of the cross. "The cross! the cross!" was the response of thousands who crowded about the platform. Queen Eleanor imitated her husband and was followed by such a host of nobles bishops and knights that Bernard tore his garments into strips to supply the enthusiasts with the insignia of their new devotion. Similar scenes were enacted throughout France wherever the saint appeared. Eye witnesses do not hesitate to tell of miracles wrought by his hands emblazoning his mission with the seals of heaven."

"Not distrustful of the king, but credulous of the heavenly mission of Bernard, the multitude, including the most noted warriors, called for the monk to become their military leader. Only the intervention of the Holy Father, who declared that it was sufficient for the saint to be the trumpet of Heaven without wielding the sword, allayed the universal demand."

"St. Bernard said of Henry, "He comes of the devil and to the devil he shall return.""

"Bernard was the best monk that ever lived, whom I admire beyond all the rest put together."

"Before a vast assembly in 1097 Pope Urban II said: "If you must have blood, bathe your hands In the blood of infidels. ...soldiers of hell become soldiers of the living God." Whereupon the multitude shouted: "It Is the will of God." Bernard, the holiest man of his century, cried out: "...Cursed be he who does not stain his sword with blood." In 1188 the Pope ordered prayers against the Saracens to be said daily."

"Les sanglots longs Des violons De l'automne Blessent mon cœur D'une langueur Monotone."

"Et je m'en vais Au vent mauvais Qui m'emporte Deçà, delà, Pareil à la Feuille morte."

"La lune blanche Luit dans les bois; De chaque branche Part une voix Sous la ramée."

"Il pleure dans mon cœur Comme il pleut sur la ville. Quelle est cette langueur Qui pénètre mon cœur?"

"C'est bien la pire peine De ne savoir pourquoi Sans amour et sans haine Mon cœur a tant de peine!"

"Qu'as-tu fait, ô toi que voilà Pleurant sans cesse, Dis, qu'as-tu fait, toi que voilà De ta jeunesse?"

"De la musique avant toute chose, Et pour cela préfère l'Impair Plus vague et plus soluble dans l'air Sans rien en lui qui pèse ou qui pose. Il faut aussi que tu n'ailles point Choisir tes mots sans quelque méprise: Rien de plus cher que la chanson grise Où l'Indécis au Précis se joint."

"Pas la Couleur, rien que la nuance!"

"Prends l'éloquence et tords-lui son cou! Tu feras bien, en train d'énergie, Du rendre un peu la Rime assagie. Si l'on n’y veille, elle ira jusqu’où? Ô qui dira les torts de la Rime! Quel enfant sourd ou quel nègre fou Nous a forgé ce bijou d'un sou Qui sonne creux et faux sous la lime?"

"Que ton vers soit la bonne aventure Éparse au vent crispé du matin Qui va fleurant la menthe et le thym… Et tout le reste est littérature."

"Anna Margolin was greatly influenced by Baudelaire, Verlaine, and Rimbaud; among the Germans, by Else Lasker-Schüler and Rainer Maria Rilke; and among the Yiddish poets, by Itsik Manger and Avrom Sutzkever."

"That time, that excitement, I will always remember,/like a song without words, like a poem by Verlaine."

"Two of the most perfect lives I have come across in my own experience are the lives of Verlaine and of Prince Kropotkin: both of them men who have passed years in prison: the first, the one Christian poet since Dante; the other, a man with a soul of that beautiful white Christ which seems coming out of Russia."

"Verlaine, the maudit poet, but with a strong religious torment that ended up prevailing, speaking of the love for Mary: «all other loves are orders». With similar words, he wanted to underline that "free" character of Marian devotion that the Church has always safeguarded. Over 20 centuries, only a few dogmas have been proclaimed about her di lei: which among other things, we know, are at the service and shelter of her di lei Son di lei, well before her di lei. Only to these defined truths does the Catholic owe homage. Everything else, regarding Mary, is left to the free sensitivity and initiative of the believer."

"I have always believed that fashion was not made only to make women more beautiful, but also to reassure them, give them confidence."

"I don't really like knees."

"I have often said that I wish I had invented blue jeans: the most spectacular, the most practical, the most relaxed and nonchalant. They have expression, modesty, sex appeal, simplicity - all I hope for in my clothes."

"The most beautiful makeup of a woman is passion. But cosmetics are easier to buy."

"Je ameroie mieus que uns Escoz venist d'Escosse et gouvernast le peuple du royaume bien et loyaument, que que tu le gouvernasses mal apertement."

"On se doit assemer en robes et en armes en tel manière que li preudome de cest siècle ne dient que on en face trop, ne les joenes gens de cest siècle ne dient que on en face peu."

"A justices tenir et à droitures soies loiaus et roides à tes sougiez, sans tourner à destre ne à senestre, mais adès à droit, et soustien la querelle dou povre jeusques à tant que la verités soit desclairie."

"Saint Louis represents a return to the idea of the priest-king. He is in harmony with his time, which is that of Saint Thomas Aquinas, and characterized by a revival of the Christian faith."

"Up to his time the Capetian house had been prosaic and matter-of-fact. He will glorify that house and give it spiritual grandeur. Though none of his successors will equal him, the spiritual elevation of his life and work will leave an aureole about the family of the Capetians. Most of the other royal or imperial houses of Europe had eagles, lions, leopards, or some sort of carnivorous animal as their emblem, while the house of France had chosen three modest flowers. Saint Louis was the justification of the lilies."

"In internal affairs also, the reign of Saint Louis was one of justice and not of weakness. He was a just judge, but he knew very well how to send even barons to the gallows. Order is heaven's first law, and Louis sought law and order."

"If the figure of Saint Louis was so soon to be idealized in story and legend, it is not only because the king was good, just and charitable; it is because, as his chronicler Joinville says, under his rule through righteous administration France had become more prosperous and the way of life easier and more humane. He will bequeath to the Capetian monarchy and to France enduring renown."

"The voice of history renders a more honourable testimony, that he united the virtues of a king, an hero, and a man; that his martial spirit was tempered by the love of private and public justice; and that Louis was the father of his people, the friend of his neighbours, and the terror of the infidels. Superstition alone, in all the extent of her baleful influence, corrupted his understanding and his heart; his devotion stooped to admire and imitate the begging friars of Francis and Dominic; he pursued with blind and cruel zeal the enemies of the faith; and the best of kings twice descended from his throne to seek the adventures of a spiritual knight-errant."

"The greater perfection a soul aspires after, the more dependent it is upon Divine Grace."

"Il y a une chose plus triste à perdre que la vie, c’est la raison de vivre, Plus triste que de perdre ses biens, c’est de perdre son espérance."

"Il n'y a pour les choses et pour les poèmes qu'une seule manière d'être nouveaux, c'est d'être vrais et qu'une seule manière d'être jeunes, c'est d'être éternels."

"Si l'ordre est le plaisir de la raison, le désordre est le délice de l'imagination."

"In the little moment that remains to us between the crisis and the catastrophe, we may as well drink a glass of champagne."

"Art imitates nature not in its effects as such, but in its causes, in its ‘manner,’ in its process, which are nothing but a participation in and a derivation of actual objects, of the Art of God himself."

"J'avais complètement oublié la religion et j'étais à son égard d'une ignorance sauvage. La première lueur de vérité me fut donnée par la rencontre des livres d'un grand poète, à qui je dois une éternelle reconnaissance, et qui a eu dans la formation de ma pensée une part prépondérante, Arthur Rimbaud. La lecture des Illuminations, puis, quelques mois après, d'Une Saison en enfer, fut pour moi un événement capital. Pour la première fois, ces livres ouvraient une fissure dans mon bagne matérialiste et me donnaient l'impression vivante et presque physique du surnaturel."

"I read, I study, I examine, I listen, I reflect, and out of all of this I try to form an idea into which I put as much common sense as I can. I shall not speak much for fear of saying foolish things; I will risk still less for fear of doing them, for I am not disposed to abuse the confidence which they have deigned to show me. Such is the conduct which until now I have followed and will follow."

"Humanity has gained its suit; Liberty will nevermore be without an asylum."

"Liberty consists in the freedom to do everything which injures no one else; hence the exercise of the natural rights of each man has no limits except those which assure to the other members of the society the enjoyment of the same rights."

"True republicanism is the sovereignty of the people. There are natural and imprescriptible rights which an entire nation has no right to violate, just as national sovereignty is above the secondary agreements of the government."

"An irresistible passion that would induce me to believe in innate ideas, and the truth of prophecy, has decided my career. I have always loved liberty with the enthusiasm which actuates the religious man with the passion of a lover, and with the conviction of a geometrician. On leaving college, where nothing had displeased me more than a state of dependance, I viewed the greatness and the littleness of the court with contempt, the frivolities of society with pity, the minute pedantry of the army with disgust, and oppression of every sort with indignation. The attraction of the American revolution transported me suddenly to my place. I felt myself tranquil only when sailing between the continent whose powers I had braved, and that where, although our arrival and our ultimate success were problematical, I could, at the age of nineteen, take refuge in the alternative of conquering or perishing in the cause to which I had devoted myself."

"I would never have drawn my sword in the cause of America, if I could have conceived that thereby I was founding a land of slavery."

"If the liberties of the American people are ever destroyed, they will fall by the hands of the Romish clergy."

"Pronounce him one of the first men of his age, and you have yet not done him justice. Try him by that test to which he sought in vain to stimulate the vulgar and selfish spirit of Napoleon; class him among the men who, to compare and seat themselves, must take in the compass of all ages; turn back your eyes upon the records of time; summon from the creation of the world to this day the mighty dead of every age and every clime — and where, among the race of merely mortal men, shall one be found, who, as the benefactor of his kind, shall claim to take precedence of Lafayette?"

"Born and educated in the highest order of feudal Nobility, under the most absolute Monarchy of Europe, in possession of an affluent fortune, and master of himself and of all his capabilities at the moment of attaining manhood, the principle of republican justice and of social equality took possession of his heart and mind, as if by inspiration from above. He devoted himself, his life, his fortune, his hereditary honors, his towering ambition, his splendid hopes, all to the cause of liberty. He came to another hemisphere to defend her. He became one of the most effective champions of our Independence; but, that once achieved, he returned to his own country, and thenceforward took no part in the controversies which have divided us. In the events of our Revolution, and in the forms of policy which we have adopted for the establishment and perpetuation of our freedom, Lafayette found the most perfect form of government. He wished to add nothing to it."

"When the principle of hereditary dominion shall be extinguished in all the institutions of France; when government shall no longer be considered as property transmissible from sire to son, but as a trust committed for a limited time, and then to return to the people whence it came; as a burdensome duty to be discharged, and not as a reward to be abused; when a claim, any claim, to political power by inheritance shall, in the estimation of the whole French people, be held as it now is by the whole people of the North American Union — then will be the time for contemplating the character of Lafayette, not merely in the events of his life, but in the full development of his intellectual conceptions, of his fervent aspirations, of the labors and perils and sacrifices of his long and eventful career upon earth; and thenceforward, till the hour when the trump of the Archangel shall sound to announce that Time shall be no more, the name of Lafayette shall stand enrolled upon the annals of our race, high on the list of the pure and disinterested benefactors of mankind."

"Lafayette avoided the factions jealous of Washington because he recognized that Washington was the Revolution and that should he be reduced in power or replaced, the whole cause would collapse. … Washington was a shrewd judge of character and never would have warmed to Lafayette if he had been only a superficial ingratiating romantic. Lafayette scrupulously looked after his men, spending his own money when Congress failed to provide them necessities. Nor was he backward in suggesting to Washington certain changes and innovations from French military practice."

"Ambition, as that passion is generally understood,— a strong desire to rise above others, to occupy the first place, — formed no part of Lafayette's character. In him the passion was nothing more than a constant and irresistible wish to do good."

"Lafayette valued reputation and glory, but cared little for the power that generally results from them. Having one day been asked who was in his opinion the greatest man of this age: "In my idea," replied he, "General Washington is the greatest man, for I look upon him as the most virtuous.""

"No one deserves more than he the esteem which he enjoys here. He is a prodigy for his age, full of courage, spirit, judgment, good manners, feelings of generosity and of zeal for the cause of liberty on this continent."

"Lafayette is a young man of royal birth, with liberal politics and what Jefferson later called "a canine appetite for fame." Someone said he was "a statue in search of a pedestal." But he was intoxicated with, [had] a rather theoretical love of, liberty. It was theoretical because liberty wasn't known to many Europeans. [Lafayette] was a great romantic and he fell in love with America, the concept of America that the French had. This wild new world where you could start the world over, to use Tom Paine's phrase."

"Lafayette, nous voilà!"

"Despite all of his face-smashing asskicking prowess, perhaps the Marquis de Lafayette's greatest contribution to the American Revolution was his ability to get the French Crown off its ass to help bail our shit out. … The Marquis de Lafayette is probably one of the only Frenchmen to ever be declared a national hero in the United States — a statistic that is badass in and of itself. Roughly 40 cities in America are named after him, he has numerous statues across the country, and he is fondly remembered as a motherfucker who helped us gain our independence from our oppressive British masters. He was also a goddamned badass who kicked nuts, refused to let anybody stand in the way of his mission to bring freedom to the common man, and bravely fought for liberty and equality — even when it didn't pay dick."

"The Marquis de Lafayette is extremely solicitous of having a command equal to his rank. I do not know in what light Congress will view the matter, but it appears to me, from a consideration of his illustrious and important connexions, the attachment which he has manifested for our cause, and the consequences which his return in disgust might produce, that it will be advisable to gratify him in his wishes; and the more so, as several gentlemen from France, who came over under some assurances, have gone back disappointed in their expectations. His conduct with respect to them stands in a favorable point of view; having interested himself to remove their uneasiness, and urged the impropriety of their making any unfavorable representations upon their arrival at home; and in all his letters he has placed our affairs in the best situation he' could. Besides, he is sensible; discreet in his manners; has made great proficiency in our language; and, from the disposition he discovered at the battle of Brandywine, possesses a large share of bravery and military ardor."

"Dès 1913, le prix Nobel Otto Heinrich Warburg fut le premier à observer et expliquer que le cancer ne peut se développer dans un milieu riche en oxygène, donc acide. Le prix Nobel Roy Walford observa également que les restrictions caloriques pouvaient augmenter la longevité et la santé."

"Q: I have read that you also, at least sometimes, had a chain around your neck, and you were tied to a tree?"

"Ce qui est familier aux savants de profession a grand besoin d'être mis dans le domaine commun."

"It would be easier to endow a fool with intellect than to persuade him that he had none."

"Je ne trouve rien de si pénible que d'avoir à mener des hommes."

"Ce n'est point l'observation mais la théorie qui m'a conduit à ce résultat que l'expérience a ensuite confirmé."

"Dans le choix d'un système, on ne doit avoir égard qu'à la simplicité des hypothèses; celle des calculs ne peut être d'aucun poids dans la balance des probabilités. La nature ne s'est pas embarrassée des difficultés d'analyse; elle n'a évité que la complication des moyens. Elle paraît s'être proposé de faire beaucoup avec peu : c'est un principe que le perfectionnement des sciences physiques appuie sans cesse de preuves nouvelles."

"Si l'on s'est quelquefois égaré en voulant simplifier les éléments d'une science, c'est qu'on a établi des systèmes avant d'avoir rassemblé un assez grand nombre de faits. Telle hypothèse, très-simple quand on ne considère qu'une classe de phénomènes, nécessite beaucoup d'autres hypothèses lorsqu'on veut sortir du cercle étroit dans lequel on s'était d'abord renfermé. Si la nature s'est proposé de produire le maximum d'effets avec le minimum de causes, c'est dans l'ensemble de ses lois qu'elle a dû résoudre ce grand problème. Il est sans doute bien difficile de découvrir les bases de cette admirable économie, c'est-à-dire les causes les plus simples des phénomènes envisagés sous un point de vue aussi étendu. Mais, si ce principe général de la philosophie des sciences physiques ne conduit pas immédiatement à la connaissance de la vérité, il peut néanmoins diriger les efforts de l'esprit humain, en l'éloignant des systèmes qui rapportent les phénomènes à un trop grand nombre de causes différentes, et en lui faisant adopter de préférence ceux qui, appuyés sur le plus petit nombre d'hypothèses, senties plus féconds en conséquences."

"On graduating from the school, a studious young man who would withstand the tedium and monotony of his duties has no choice but to lose himself in some branch of science or literature completely irrelevant to his assignment."

"The world belongs to women. In other words, to death. But everyone lies about it."

"Stop being astounded by the realization that sex is the object of such misunderstanding and of such automatic clumsiness that it implies either a universal loathing or a universal veneration (which are much the same thing)."

"Nombres est écrit avant mai 1968, coïncidence improbable mais profonde."

"Above all, we must be accurate, and it is an obligation which we intend to fulfill scrupulously."

"You are invited to come to see the Earth turn, tomorrow, from three to five, at Meridian Hall of the Paris Observatory."

"The phenomenon develops calmly, but it is invisible, unstoppable. One feels, one sees it born and grow steadily; and it is not in one's power to either hasten it or slow it down. Any person, brought into the presence of this fact, stops for a few moments and remains pensive and silent; and then generally leaves, carrying with him forever a sharper, keener sense of our incessant motion through space."

"To contribute usefully to the advance of science, one must sometimes not disdain from undertaking simple verifications."

"May those men who are animated by the true scientific spirit cease to believe that they are obliged to consider only subjects of public utility; ...because, one must not hide it, the field of applications, so rich and fertile today, would not take long to be blighted by sterility if it ceased to be fertilized and revivified by the beneficial light which theoretical research radiates and pours incessantly upon it."

"At the age of 25, not having learnt anything at school nor from book, enthusiastic about science but not about study, Léon Foucault took on the task of making the work of scientists understandable to the public and of passing judgement on the value to the work of leading men of science. From the start he showed great subtlety, good judgement based on more prudence than would be expected. His first articles were remarkable; they were spiritual. He took his duties seriously. Launched, without any experience, into the highest level of science with all its confusion and problems, he was assured carrying out a role in which mediocrity would mean failure, with complete success. … Always polite, yet seeking the truth, Foucault applied carefully considered judgements. Previously an unknown, this young man with no scientific publications nor known scientific discoveries, displayed a quiet authority and frankness which irritated many leading scientists."

"The aggressor has always already been attacked. Why are relations of rivalry never seen as symmetrical? Because people always have the impression that the other is the first to attack, that they are never the ones who begin, though in a way they are always the ones. Individualism is a formidable lie. We make others understand that we recognize the signs of aggressiveness which they manifest, and they in turn interpret our posture as aggression."

"The God of Christianity isn’t the violent God of archaic religion, but the non-violent God who willingly becomes a victim in order to free us from our violence."

"There is always an attempt to move away from the Cross, that is, to perpetuate man’s misrecognition of his violence and protect his pride from the revelation. Without the Cross, there is no revelation of the fundamental injustice of the scapegoat mechanism, which is the founder of human culture, with all its repercussions in our relationships with each other."

"It was Plato who determined once and for all the cultural meaning of imitation, but this meaning is truncated, torn from the essential dimension of acquisitive behavior, which is also the dimension of conflict. If the behavior of certain higher animals, particularly the apes, seems to foreshadow human behavior, it does so almost exclusively, perhaps, because the role of acquisitive mimesis is so important in their behavior, although it is not as central as it is for the human being. If one ape observes another reach for an object, it is immediately tempted to imitate the gesture. It also happens that the animal visibly resists the temptation, and if the imitative gesture amuses us by reminding us of human beings, the failure to complete it, that is to say the repression of what already can be nearly defined as a desire, amuses us even more. It makes the animal a sort of brother to us by showing it subject to the same fundamental rule as humanity—that of preventing conflict, which the convergence of two or several avid hands toward one and the same object cannot help but provoke."

"An examination of our terms, such as competition, rivalry, emulation, etc., reveals that the traditional perspective remains inscribed in the language. Competitors are fundamentally those who run or walk together, rivals who dwell on opposite banks of the same river, etc…The modern view of competition and conflict is the unusual and exceptional view, and our incomprehension is perhaps more problematic than the phenomenon of primitive prohibition. Primitive societies have never shared our conception of violence. For us, violence has a conceptual autonomy, a specificity that is utterly unknown to primitive societies. We tend to focus on the individual act, whereas primitive societies attach only limited importance to it and have essentially pragmatic reasons for refusing to isolate such an act from its context. This context is one of violence. What permits us to conceive abstractly of an act of violence and view it as an isolated crime is the power of a judicial institution that transcends all antagonists. If the transcendence of the judicial institution is no longer there, if the institution loses its efficacy or becomes incapable of commanding respect, the imitative and repetitious character of violence becomes manifest once more; the imitative character of violence is in fact most manifest in explicit violence, where it acquires a formal perfection it had not previously possessed. At the level of the blood feud, in fact, there is always only one act, murder, which is performed in the same way for the same reasons in vengeful imitation of the preceding murder. And this imitation propagates itself by degrees. It becomes a duty for distant relatives who had nothing to do with the original act, if in fact an original act can be identified; it surpasses limits in space and time and leaves destruction everywhere in its wake; it moves from generation to generation. In such cases, in its perfection and paroxysm mimesis becomes a chain reaction of vengeance, in which human beings are constrained to the monotonous repetition of homicide. Vengeance turns them into doubles."

"There is no culture without a tomb and no tomb without a culture; in the end the tomb is the first and only cultural symbol. The above-ground tomb does not have to be invented. It is the pile of stones in which the victim of the unanimous stoning is buried. It is the first pyramid."

"When the father is no longer an overbearing patriarch the son looks everywhere for the law - and finds no lawgiver."

"[Girard] overturned three widespread assumptions about the nature of desire and violence: first, that our desire is authentic and our own; second, that we fight from our differences, rather than our sameness; and third, that religion is the cause of violence, rather than an archaic solution for controlling violence within a society, as he would assert."

"France is the nation of the rights of man. … I am sure that none of you commits the insult of thinking that the government, the army, or the administration could wish for and organize torture."

"There will be no peace in Europe if the States rebuild themselves on the basis of national sovereignty, with its implications of prestige politics and economic protection…. The countries of Europe are not strong enough individually to be able to guarantee prosperity and social development for their peoples. The States of Europe must therefore form a federation or a European entity that would make them into a common economic unit."

"Through the consolidation of basic production and the institution of a new High Authority, whose decisions will bind France, Germany and the other countries that join, this proposal represents the first concrete step towards a European federation, imperative for the preservation of peace."

"Continue, continue, there is no future for the people of Europe other than in union."

"Make men work together show them that beyond their differences and geographical boundaries there lies a common interest."

"[A]fter eighty-nine years of his life, Monnet remains, as he has been throughout, impregnably optimistic but not Utopian. He does not believe in miracles, and although he believes that crucial moments of opportunity must never be lost, he gives more importance to patience and direction than to speed and the construction of false timetables. His modesty and manner is underpinned by an unshakeable intellectual self-confidence. ... He is undoubtedly a great man, who has lived a remarkable life."

"[The Community's] crosses and trials give me confidence. But I derive my hope above all, and most especially, from our utter incapacity, for it is always upon nothingness that God is pleased to rear His works. If at any day we accomplish some good here, the glory will certainly be His alone, since He has employed for this end instruments more capable of spoiling everything than of making it succeed."

"We are not called upon to do all the good possible, but only that which we can do."

"You may have to wait longer than you would like, you may have to bear privations; but, bear and forebear. Have confidence in the Providence that so far has never failed us. The way is not yet clear. Grope along slowly. Do not press matters; be patient, be trustful."

"I must close now, for I am obliged to go to Terre Haute, where I am called to court to explain my conduct and defend myself against accusations relative to counterfeit money that was said to have been received from me. One has to come to America to be treated thus! Sometimes I am so disheartened with this country that I feel as if I were carrying on my shoulders the weight of its highest mountains, and in my heart all the thorns of its wilderness. Pray for me occasionally that I may not lose courage; nay, more, that I may be brave enough to hold up others who falter sometimes."

"Let us never forget that if we wish to die like the Saints we must live like them. Let us force ourselves to imitate their virtues, in particular humility and charity."

"...the Americans must have the Almighty dollar. Their cupidity renders them daring and indifferent to everything else. It is nothing to them to expose their lives and those of others in order to gain money. How materialistic these people are!"

"We have gone out several times this summer to gather simples and linden blossoms, etc. In each excursion we discover something marvelous, beautiful, and useful in the magnificent forests of Indiana. At each step we can admire the grandeur, the power, the goodness of God. How bountifully He provides for all our wants -- I would even say for our pleasures! I love our woods and solitude very much; …"

"...they wish to make us pay taxes, which is contrary to the laws of the State. We refuse positively. It embarrasses them a little to have women resist them and speak to them about the law. Woman in this country is only yet one fourth of the family. I hope that, through the influence of religion and education, she will eventually become at least one half the "better half.""

"I have already exceeded the amount of work my head can bear."

"Come, if we have to die, let us die, but say nothing! … so true it is that misfortune binds hearts together."

"The true country of a Christian, but above all of a Religious, is Heaven, towards which we are tending; it is for God that we have made this sacrifice, and, I may add, He has already repaid us, for His protecting hand has assisted us in a visible manner, and we cannot but recognize the attentions of His Providence."

"They [Sisters of Charity in Frederick] excel in music, which is an indispensable thing in this country, even for the poor. No piano, no pupils! Such is the spirit of this country -- Music and Steam!"

"Nothing troubled the charm and silence of this solitude. Making the most serious reflections on what we behold, and on our present position, I said to myself: Thus does life also pass away, now calm, now agitated, but at last the end is attained. Happy, ah, thrice happy they who can then look out to the never-ending future with calm and confidence, who can cast themselves on the bosom of God, the Center of our felicity."

"When one has nothing more to lose, the heart is inaccessible to fear."

"As to our garden and yard, we have all the woods. And the wilderness is our only cloister, for our house is like an oak tree planted therein."

"It is astonishing that this remote solitude has been chosen for a novitiate and especially for an academy. All appearances are against it."

"My heart full of gratitude, longed to go to the sanctuary of Mary Immaculate to thank her for having granted this day of consolation to us. Happy to be free, we went straightway to the church of Our Lady of Victory, to pour out our hearts in tears of joy in the presence of our heavenly Protector and Mother."

"A bell was rung. All the passengers came on deck. Never shall I forget the scene we then witnessed. It was ten o'clock in the morning. The sky was overspread with thick dark clouds. It looked like a vast temple at night, as the fitful, lurid sun cast a yellowish tinge resembling the pale light of the tapers near a catafalque. The foaming waves opened like immense tombs that seemed avid to swallow their first victim. When all was ready a porthole was opened, and a plank painted black, six feet long and three broad, was suspended over the deep. The body of a child, wrapped in a winding sheet, was placed upon it, with a large stone attached to the feet. For a minute or two the captain read -- I do not know what prayer. Profound silence reigned. The father scarcely shed a tear. The mother seemed quite unmoved. At a word spoken by the captain, the plank was raised in the air, and the next instant the light corpse glided into the waters. I made the Sign of the Cross over it, but alas, I do not know whether the child was even baptized. The passengers withdrew, apparently untouched by the scene, and some even smiled. How impiety deadens the heart!"

"Every evening at the same hour when the weather was calm, I used to go on deck and bless God for all the wonders of His creation. I loved to consider the care of God's Providence which extends even to the little fishes."

"For true hearts there is no separating ocean; or, rather, God is their ocean, in Whom they meet and are united. They love, they lose themselves in Him."

"The most painful sight I saw in New Orleans was the selling of slaves. Every day in the streets at appointed places, negroes and negresses in holiday attire are exposed for this shameful traffic, like the meanest animals at our fairs. This spectacle oppressed my heart. Lo! I said to myself, these Americans, so proud of their liberty, thus make game of the liberty of others. Poor negroes! I would have wished to buy them all that I might say to them, "Go! Bless Providence. You are free!""

"The beauty of the forests of Indiana in the rich and lovely month of May surpasses all description. The rivers, swollen by the rains, flow through long lanes of verdure, caressing the islands they seem to carry with them in their course and which look like floating nosegays. The trees raise their straight trunks to the height of more than a hundred and twenty feet and are crowned with tops of admirable beauty. The magnolia, the dog-wood, the catalpa, covered with white flowers, the permed snow of the springtime, intermingle with the delicate green of the other trees."

"Écoute les savants, mais ne les écoute que d'une oreille!... Que l'autre soit toujours prête à recevoir les doux accents de la voix de ton ami céleste!"

"Either one or the other [ analysis or synthesis ] may be direct or indirect. The direct procedure is when the point of departure is known-direct synthesis in the elements of geometry. By combining at random simple truths with each other, more complicated ones are deduced from them. This is the method of discovery, the special method of inventions, contrary to popular opinion."

"There is synthesis when, in combining therein judgments that are made known to us from simpler relations, one deduces judgments from them relative to more complicated relations. There is analysis when from a complicated truth one deduces more simple truths."

"The experimental investigation by which Ampère established the law of the mechanical action between electric currents is one of the most brilliant achievements in science. The whole, theory and experiment, seems as if it had leaped, full grown and full armed, from the brain of the 'Newton of electricity.' It is perfect in form, and unassailable in accuracy, and it is summed up in a formula from which all the phenomena may be deduced, and which must always remain the cardinal formula of electro-dynamics."

"I am not dying; I am entering life."

"One day she was playing on the swing when her father passed and called to her, "Come and give me a kiss, my little queen." Dérange-toi, Papa! Thérèse replied pertly — an untranslatable compound of "Come for it yourself" and "If you want it, you'll have to go the trouble of getting it", with perhaps even, "Don't be so lazy." Her father went by with a grave expression, but without a word, while Marie said: "You naughty little thing, how can you be so rude to your father?" I got off the swing at once; I had really learned my lesson, and the whole house echoed with my cries of contrition."

"Since the age of three I have refused God nothing."

"It seems to me that if a little flower could speak, it would tell simply what God has done for it without trying to hide its blessings. It would not say, under the pretext of a false humility, it is not beautiful and without perfume, that the sun has taken away its splendor and the storm has broken its stem when it knows that all this is untrue. The flower about to tell her story rejoices at having to publish the totally gratuitous gifts of Jesus. She knows that nothing in herself was capable of attracting the divine glances, and His mercy alone brought about everything that is good in her."

"My happy disposition completely changed after Mamma's death. I, once so full of life, became timid and retiring, sensitive to an excessive degree. One look was enough to reduce me to tears, and the only way I was content was to be left completely alone. I could not bear the company of strangers and found my joy only within the intimacy of the family."

"I do not have the courage to force myself to search out beautiful prayers in books. There are so many of them it really gives me a headache! and each prayer is more beautiful than the others. I cannot recite them all and not knowing which to choose, I do like children who do not know how to read, I say very simply to God what I wish to say, without composing beautiful sentences, and He always understands me. For me, prayer is an aspiration of the heart, it is a simple glance directed to heaven, it is a cry of gratitude and love in the midst of trial as well as joy; finally, it is something great, supernatural, which expands my soul and unites me to Jesus."

"Even if I had all the crimes possible on my conscience, I am sure I should lose none of my confidence. Heartbroken with repentance, I would simply throw myself into my Saviour's arms, for I know how much He loves the prodigal son. I have heard what He said to Mary Magdalene, to the woman taken in adultery, and the Samaritan woman. No one can make me frightened any more, because I know what to believe about His mercy and His love; I know that in the twinkling of an eye all those thousands of sins would be consumed as a drop of water cast into a blazing fire."

"I thank Our Lord that He let me find nothing but bitterness in human affections. I should have been caught easily, and had my wings clipped...Our Lord knew that I was far too weak to face temptation; He knew that I would certainly have burnt myself in the bewildering light of earthly things, and so He did not let it shine in my eyes. Where stronger souls find joy but remain detached because they are faithful, I found only misery."

"In spite of everything, I feel that I am filled with courage; I am sure that God is not going to abandon me. [-]Oh. I want to refuse Him [Jesus] nothing, and even though I feel sad and alone on this earth, He still remains with me. And has not St. Teresa said: God alone suffices. ""

"M. Révérony said immediately: "Most Holy Father, this is a child who wants to enter Carmel at fifteen, but the superiors are considering the matter at this moment." (The good pope is so old that one would say he is dead; I would never have pictured him like this.) The Holy Father said simply: "If God wills it, you will enter." [-]I was crying a lot when writing this letter; my heart is heavy. However, God cannot give me trials that are above my strength. He has given me the courage to bear this trial. I am the Child Jesus' little ball;if He wishes to break His toy, He is free. Yes, I will all that He wills."

"I find that trials help very much in detaching us from this earth. They make us look higher than this world. Here below, nothing can satisfy us. We cannot enjoy a little rest except in being ready to do God's will. [-] Truly, life isn't cheerful. It is very difficult to be attached to it. Au revoir, dear Pauline, my Confidante."

"I assure you that God is much better than you believe."

"Saint Thérèse and the followers of the little way seem to perpetuate the words: “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the Kingdom of Heaven.” (Mt 18:3)."

"We are at that one of life's hours (it strikes for every man) when truth imposes itself, by itself, with irresistible obviousness, when each of us has only to stretch forth his arms to reach at a single bound the surface of shadows, even the sunlight of God. Then is human prudence but a snare and a delusion. Sanctity!' cried out the old priest in a deep voice; 'by saying this word in your presence and for you alone, I know the hurt I inflict upon you! You are not unaware of what sanctity is: a vocation, a calling. Up to the place where God awaits you you will have to climb—climb, or be lost. Expect no human help."

"For temptation is like the birth of another man inside a man, a horrible extension of himself. He drags this weight in his heart, not daring to cast it from him. For where could he cast it? Into another heart? The saint is always alone, at the foot of the cross. No other friend."

"There is no mask that temptation cannot wear, and the idea that Satan is purely a logician is an illusion held by not a few naive people. Many a shifty old man sees him as an opponent in an academic argument, but if he does the observer is still at the stage of games and trifles. Sometimes, though not often, the black desire to harm wins out over quicker and less bitter delights. When that happens, evil shows itself for what it truly is, not a way of life, but an attack on life itself."

"The contradictions in Renan, his feminine sensibility, coquetry, unavowed egotism, and sudden emotional outbursts, all indicate a soul deliberately using distraction as a means of evasion. The perpetual equivocation bears witness to God in the same way as the twisting and turning of a hunted animal indicates the presence of an unseen hunter."

"More often than not, nothingness is reluctantly and despairingly taken to be the only hypothesis possible when all the others have failed, since by definition it cannot be disproven and is beyond the scope of reason."

"[P]ride has no intrinsic substance, being no more than the name given to the soul devouring itself. When that loathsome perversion of love has borne its fruit, it has another, more meaningful and weightier name. We call it hatred."

"He [Abbé Cénabre] had often reflected on the plight of even the most illustrious of those renegades who finish up engaged in a monotonous argument they can never quite extricate themselves from and seem to be insulting the God they have offended, dragging Him along with them like a fellow criminal shackled to them.... He thought, not without some justification, that where such tortured and anxious nihilists had made their greatest mistake was in having freed only their intellects, leaving belief to go on surviving and festering in the most hidden and least accessible parts of their sensibility. Such a deep and hidden contradiction is all the more destructive because they cannot form a clear idea of it, or indeed express it, except in terms of stammering, repeated, pointless, and childish expressions of hatred. They no longer have any part in a faith that still holds them in abject and slavering thrall. It matters little that they think they have destroyed it."

"[T]here is nothing that God hates so much as a liar."

"[Chantal to Fiodor:] "It seems to me that evil is much less complicated than you would like to believe. Here or anywhere else there is only one sin." "What sin?" "To tempt God," she said. "And what's the use? I think you are really very stupid. God looks where He pleases. If He has not yet looked at you, what is the use of tempting Him?""

"God knows that we should not despise anything. We must do our best."

"Once or twice, when she [Chantal] had adroitly avoided an opportunity of pleasing or winning admiration (for her shrewd wit and vivacity made her popular), she was astonished at his [Abbé Chevance's] disapproval. [She asked him why.] Blushing he had replied, "I will tell you, my daughter. I used to try very hard to be admired, to be liked. That is the world!" Then, with that profound finesse which no one had ever had the wit to recognize in the former priest of Costerel-sur-Meuse, he at once added, "I had more to fear from the world than you have.""

"If hell has no answer for the questioning dead, it is not because it refuses to answer (for rigorous, alas, in observance, is the imperishable fire), but it is because hell has nothing to say, will say nothing eternally."

"She [Chantal] did not understand him [Fiodor]. She never could and never would understand him, being as invulnerable in her truthfulness as he in his falseness. And yet, she hated him unconsciously with a jealous hatred — for what other name, alas, could be given to that revolt of her pure conscience, so well armed and, at the same time, so defenceless? She hated him instinctively as though he already possessed the incomparable secret with which to menace her, to menace God Himself."

"Sadness came into the world with Satan — that world our Saviour never prayed for, the world you say I do not know. Oh, it is not so difficult to recognize: it is the world that prefers cold to warmth! What can God find to say to those who, of their own free will, of their own weight incline towards sadness and turn instinctively towards the night?"

"Like all truly pure souls she [Chantal] quickly resigned herself to past faults, thought only of how to repair whatever harm they had done. "Of all my daughters, you are certainly the least bothered by scruples of conscience," Abbé Chevance used to say.... Even sin, once the will is detached and no longer nourishes it, withers and dies sterile. It is in the secret of intentions, like in a decomposing humus, in the dark forest of future sins, unpardoned sins, half dead, half living, that new poisons are distilled."

"Chantal's only ruse … was her shattering simplicity. While a weak man or an imposter is always more complicated than the problem he is trying to solve, and thinking to encompass his adversary, merely keeps prowling interminably around himself, the heroic nature will throw itself into the heart of the danger to turn it to its own use, just as captured artillery is turned about and aimed at the backs of the fleeing enemy."

"I have just discovered something I have always known: we can no more escape from one another than we can escape from God."

"She isn't very clever or very devout,... and she certainly empties the whole salt cellar into the stories she tells me. But I love her because she never lies."

"To you a pious young girl who goes to mass and communion, seems pretty silly and childish; you take us for innocents... Well, let me tell you, sometimes we know more about evil than people who have only learned to offend God."

"[A] good Christian does not care for miracles very much, because a miracle is God looking after His own affairs, and we prefer looking after them for Him."

"Only the present counts."

"[A]ll her life she [Chantal] had been carefully, heroically watching over mediocre beings who were hardly real, over things of no value."

"Appearances are nothing.... And first of all they should not be feared, they are only dangerous to the weak."

"[F]irst of all, be what you are."

"I have done no passably decent job in this world which did not at first seem to me useless - absurdly useless, useless to the point of nausea. My secret demon is called :What's the use?"

"Optimism has always seemed to me the cunning alibi of egoists, anxious to cover up their state of chronic self-satisfaction. They are optimists in order to avoid pitying other men and their misfortune. ~~ Yet pity is a vexed question."

"Money-crimes have an abstract quality. History is laden with the victims of gold, but their remains are odourless."

"The population of Majorca has always been noted for its absolute indifference to politics. In the days of the Carlistes and the Cristinos, George Sand tells us how they welcomed with equal unconcern the refugees of either side. According to the head of the Phalange, you could not have found a hundred Communists in the whole island. Where could the Party have got them from? It is a country of small market-gardening, of olives, oranges and almonds, without industry, without factories. I declare on oath that during the months preceding the civil war there was no attempt of any kind made against persons or belongings. 'There was killing in Spain,' you say. 'A hundred and thirty-five political assassinations between March and July 1936.' But in Majorca there were no crimes to avenge, so it could only have been a preventative action, the systematic extermination of suspects."

"I saw a woman of thirty-five, living peacefully in the bosom of her family after an interrupted novitiate, show sudden signs of incomprehensible nervous terror, speak of possible 'reprisals', and refuse to go out alone. A very dear friend, took pity on her, offered her shelter. 'Come, child, what have you to fear? You're one of God's little lambs...' 'Harmless? That's all you know! Everybody thinks as you do, and nobody's frightened of me. Well - you can find out for yourself. I had eight men shot, madame...'"

"When marine officers called on me at Palma, they remarked on the clean roads, the punctual trams and so on. 'Why', they exclaimed, 'business as usual - and you say there's killing going on? what nonsense!' They didn't realise that any tradesman who closed down, closed down at his peril. They didn't know that the relatives of the executed were not allowed to go into mourning. How can you expect the outside appearance of a town to be affected, just because the staff of its prisons is double, treble, ten times, a hundred times what it was? The discreet slaughter of fifteen or twenty wretched people per day, will not prevent tramways from running to schedule, cafés from being full, or churches resounding with the Te Deum."

"A large number of suspects, both men and women, escaped martial law for lack of any shred of evidence against them on which a court-martial could convict. So they began setting them free in groups, according to their birth-place. But half-way, the car-load would be emptied into a ditch."

"I know that the Crusaders of Majorca put to death, in a single night, all the prisoners who were huddled in the Catalonian trenches. They took the whole herd down to the shore and shot them, one beast at a time - they were quite leisurely about it. The Lord High Archbishop of Palma arranged to be represented at the ceremony, by a certain number of his priests. You can picture the scene can't you? 'Come on, father, isn't that one ready?' - 'Just a moment captain, I'm handing him over to you at once.' When the job was finished, the Crusaders piled their cattle in two heaps - those who'd been given absolution and those who hadn't- then sprinkled petrol over them. It is quite likely that this purification by fire may then have taken on, by reason of the presence of priests officiating a liturgical significance. Unfortunately I only saw these blackened, shiny creatures two days after that, contorted by the flames, some of them counterfeiting obscene poses in death, which must have been very distressing for the ladies of Palma and for their eminent confessors. A reeking tar oozed out of them..."

"Everybody in Palma knew that my son was a lieutenant in the Phalange, and I was often seen at mass. For months I had been friendly with insurgent leaders who were feared by all the suspects. And yet people I hardly knew spoke freely to me, when the slightest indiscretion on my part would have cost their liberty, or their lives. I'll tell you why it was. It was because it is still known in the world that a Frenchman doesn't let himself become a policeman's pawn - that's why. Because a Frenchman is a free man."

"I shouldn't dream of wasting my time by picking holes in the attitude of the Italian prelates throughout the war for Ethiopia. Thanks to the mustard-gas sprinklers that are used in Australia for destroying rodents, Fascist aviation has been enabled to strip whole populations of hapless negroes of their skin, so that they lay rotting in heaps in front of their huts. It makes no difference to me if the Italian prelates affirm that a war like this seems chivalrous to them. I believe that I know what is chivalrous and what is not..."

"You don't wage civil war in kid gloves. The Spanish bishops know it so well that they have been obliged to refer to 'regrettable excesses' and 'inevitable abuses'. They seem to think that war is like Shrove Tuesday, that it's a jolly respite, as it were, from social morality, and that men can give themselves up to being cruel just as gay sparks at carnival-time indulge in bottom-pinching! Once the illuminations go out, we must welcome the dear lad home with a smile that's both knowing and fatherly. 'Don't worry, my dear boy. We can none of us resist a little fun sometimes. Think no more about it.' But, Your Excellencies, this is something more than a little fun!"

"You know, sometimes I imagine what any decent agnostic of average intelligence might say, if by some impossible chance one of those intolerable praters were to let him stand awhile in the pulpit, in his stead: 'Ladies and gentlemen,... I don't share all your beliefs, but I probably know more about the history of the church than you do, because I happen to have read it, and not many parishioners can say that. For though you're not interested in unbelievers, unbelievers are extremely interested in you..Yes, we were drawn to you. But now we've decided that you're not very interesting after all, and it's rather disappointing.....Because you do not live your faith, your faith has ceased to be a living thing.'"

"There is a well known and most profound saying of people wishing to induce sympathy in each other. 'Put yourself in his place,' they say. But it is easy only to put yourself in the place of your equals. At a certain point of inferiority, real or imaginary, this substitution is no longer possible....Young Vittorio Mussolini has published a book on his Ethiopian campaign, of which I quote this extract: It was thrilling. A huge zariba, surrounded by tall trees, was very difficult to hit. I had to aim very carefully, and I only succeeded the third time. The poor devils inside jumped out when they saw their roof was on fire, and fled madly...surrounded by a ring of flames, four to five thousand Abyssinians died of suffocation. It was like hell itself. Smoke rising up to unbelievable heights, and flames turning the black sky red. Obviously Signor Vittorio Mussolini never dreamt of putting himself in the place of the Ethiopians!"

"A man given to vice is always an idealist."

"They are always talking about the fire of hell, but no one has ever seen it, my friends. For hell is cold. It used to be that the nights weren't long enough to wear out your malice, and you got up each morning with your breasts still full of poison. But now the devil himself has withdrawn from you. Ah, how alone we are in evil, my brothers! The poor human race dreams from century to century of breaking that solitude — but it's no use! The devil, who can do so many things, will never succeed in founding a Church, a Church that will put in common both the merits of hell and the sin of all. From now until the end of the world, the sinner will have to sin alone, always alone — for just as we die alone, so also do we sin alone. The devil, you see, is the friend who never stays with us to the end."

"Hatred of the priest is one of man's profoundest instincts, as well as one of the least known. That it is as old as the race itself no one doubts, yet our age has raised it to an almost prodigious degree of refinement and excellence. With the decline or disappearance of other powers, the priest, even though appearing so intimately integrated into the life of society, has become a more singular and unclassifiable being than any of those old magicians the ancient world used to keep locked up like sacred animals in the depths of its temples, existing in the intimacy of the gods alone. Priests moreover are all the more singular and unclassifiable in that they do not recognize themselves as such and are nearly always dupes of the most gross outward appearances — whether of the irony of some or the servile deference of others. But that contradiction, by nature more political than religious and used far too long to nurture clerical pride, does, through the growing feeling of their loneliness and to the extent that it is gradually transformed into hostile indifference, throw them unarmed into the heart of social conflicts they naively pride themselves on being able to resolve by using texts. But, then, what does it matter? The hour is coming when, on the ruins of the old Christian order, a new order will be born that will indeed be an order of the world, the order of the Prince of this World, of that prince whose kingdom is of this world. And the hard law of necessity, stronger than any illusions, will then remove the very object for clerical pride so long maintained simply by conventions outlasting any belief. And the footsteps of beggars shall cause the earth to tremble once again."

"Aucune haine ne saurait s’assouvir en ce monde ni dans l’autre, et la haine qu’on se porte à soi-même est probablement celle entre toutes pour laquelle il n’est pas de pardon!"

"Rather than the obsession with impurity, you'd do better to fear the nostalgia for purity."

"I can now see to the bottom of my own depths, there is nothing stopping my gaze, no obstacle is in the way. And there is nothing there."

"[T]he cradle is shallower than the grave."

"The first sign of corruption in a society that is still alive is that the end justifies the means."

"Industrial design keeps the customer happy, his client in the black and the designer busy."

"A lot of people are open to new things, as long as they look like the old ones."

"Is it responsible to camouflage one of America's most remarkable machines as a piece of gaudy merchandise? Form, which should be the clean- cut expression of mechanical excellence has become sensuous and organic."

"I believe one should design for the advantage of the largest mass of people, first and always. That takes care of ideologies and sociologies."

"Design is too important to be left to designers."

"This book is the story of a young man who came to America to make a living, and simply happened to do so in a profession which he helped to create."

"I never expected that one could fall so completely in love with a nation and a people. I already knew that very soon I would thrill at everything American, love everything American, perhaps blindly, but fervently and forever. I still remember how thrilled I was at the sight of the flag. After all these years, every time I see the Stars and Stripes in the breeze, I get the same emotional feeling. Aesthetically speaking, it is perfect. One of the outstanding "designs" of all times. It may be that a nation gets the flag it deserves."

"If there is a designer whose name is synonymous with industrial design it is Raymond Loewy (1893-1986)."

"What Charles and Ray Eames are to furniture design, Raymond Loewy is to industrial design -- the modern master"

"Vous n'avez pas, M. Mitterrand, le monopole du cœur. (You do not have, Mr Mitterrand, the monopoly of heart)."

"The rejection of the Constitutional treaty by voters in France was a mistake that should be corrected."

"Public opinion will be led to adopt, without knowing it, the proposals we dare not present to them directly. (...) This approach of 'divide and ratify' is clearly unacceptable. Perhaps it is a good exercise in presentation. But it would confirm to European citizens the notion that European construction is a procedure organised behind their backs by lawyers and diplomats."

"This text is, in fact, a rerun of a great part of the substance of the constitutional treaty."

"Europe without Greece is like a child without a birth certificate"

"Did it have to come to this? The paradox is that when Europe was less united, it was in many ways more independent. The leaders who ruled in the early stages of integration had all been formed in a world before the global hegemony of the United States, when the major European states were themselves imperial powers, whose foreign policies were self-determined. These were people who had lived through the disasters of the Second World War, but were not crushed by them. This was true not just of a figure like De Gaulle, but of Adenauer and Mollet, of Eden and Heath, all of whom were quite prepared to ignore or defy America if their ambitions demanded it. Monnet, who did not accept their national assumptions, and never clashed with the US, still shared their sense of a future in which Europeans could settle their own affairs, in another fashion. Down into the 1970s, something of this spirit lived on even in Giscard and Schmidt, as Carter discovered. But with the neo-liberal turn of the 1980s, and the arrival in power in the 1990s of a postwar generation, it faded. The new economic doctrines cast doubt on the state as a political agent, and the new leaders had never known anything except the Pax Americana. The traditional springs of autonomy were gone."

"Yet, alongside Western weaknesses, there were also serious problems for the Soviet system, while the American position was less bleak, in both absolute and relative terms, than the successive electoral defeats of presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter in presidential elections in 1976 and 1980 might suggest. Moreover, the failure of the Communists to benefit substantially from the changes in Portugal, Spain and Greece was matched by Communist weakness elsewhere in Western Europe. Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, French President from 1974 to 1981, and Helmut Schmidt, German Chancellor from 1974 to 1982, combined to act as a very strong stabilising force and to relaunch the EEC project. Within the Socialist International, the so-called Socialist Triangle of Willy Brandt, Olof Palme, Swedish Prime Minister, and Bruno Kreisky, Austrian Chancellor, was dominant. In Italy, the Communist Party, the most powerful in Western Europe, adopted a ‘Euro-Communism’ that was opposed to Soviet direction. Enrico Berlinguer, who became Party Secretary in 1973, a key figure, was committed to the existing democratic system and pursued what was termed the ‘historic compromise’ with the established Christian Democrat-dominated political system. A pact was negotiated in 1976, with the Communist Party agreeing not to try to overthrow the Christian Democratic government. Euro-Communism was a term coined in 1975 by Western European Communist leaders keen to demonstrate their democratic credentials. More generally in Western Europe, the declining position of heavy industries was a challenge to the trade unions that were central to left-wing political parties, and notably to the Communists."

"Undaunted, the Brussels establishment continued to pursue unification. By 2005 it had sought to adopt a new constitution, overseen by the veteran French politician Valéry Giscard d’Estaing. This awarded the EU a third presidency (now of the European Council as well as its Commission and Parliament), and further extended majority voting in the European Council. This ran into immediate trouble. Rarely in the EU’s history were the peoples of Europe directly consulted on its powers, or even its existence. Decisions were taken by elected governments. The Giscard constitution was rejected in French and Dutch referendums, and the final treaty by the Irish. These votes were either rerun or ignored. The final Treaty of Lisbon was signed in 2007, with virtually no concessions to subsidiary nationalism, its authors blind to any incipient resentment it might breed."

"The man of the past."

"In politics evils should be remedied not revenged."

"Etiez-vous à Sedan?"

"Usually, it is man who attacks; as for me, I defend myself, and I often capitulate."

"You ask me whether they are attached to the present government: they are sincerely grateful to it for having restored order—I saw to-day at Arles on the Roman obelisk an inscription to Louis Napoleon with the simple words—"il nous a sauvés de l'Anarchie"—which you may depend upon it expresses the sincere feeling of the industrious classes. But above all, the French peasant (who feeds the army and is the real power of France) sticks to this man and is disposed to maintain him because he is the symbol, after all, of that final breach with the past and with a feudal aristocracy by means of which the peasant has become a person[n]age and which he is firmly resolved shall never be filled up."

"I recognize the principle of the fight against the revolution as my own, but I do not believe it right to depict Louis Napoleon as the sole or just κατ’ ἐξοχήν representative of the revolution ... how many existences are there in the current political world that are not rooted in revolutionary soil? Take Spain, Portugal, Brazil, all American republics, Belgium, Holland, Switzerland, Greece, Sweden, the England that is still footed in the consciousness of the 'glorious revolution' of 1866 ... Bonapartism is not the father of the revolution."

"I never admired the character of the first Napoleon; but I recognize his great genius. His work, too, has left its impress for good on the face of Europe. The third Napoleon could have no claim to having done a good or just act."

"For decades aluminium was much more expensive than gold. In the 1860s, Emperor Napoleon III of France commissioned aluminium cutlery to be laid out for his most distinguished guests. Less important visitors had to make do with the gold knives and forks."

"Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historical facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce."

"Like most of those who study history, he learned from the mistakes of the past how to make new ones."

"After having read the French Speech from the Throne, in which it was seen that the Emperor Napoleon was lowering the flag for the great republic of the United States of North America, on the Mexican question."

"All eyes were turned towards this man. A pallid face, its bony emaciated angles thrown into bold relief by the shaded lamps, a nose large and long, moustaches, a curled lock of hair above a narrow forehead, eyes small and dull, and with a timid and uneasy manner, bearing no resemblance to the Emperor, — this man was Citizen Charles-Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte. During the murmurs which greeted his entrance, he remained for some instants, his right hand in the breast of his buttoned coat, erect and motionless on the tribune, the pediment of which bore these dates: February 22, 23, 24; and above which were inscribed these three words: Liberty, Equality, Fraternity."

"The President, functionary and servant, swore fidelity to the sovereign people. Bending before the national majesty, manifest in the omnipotent Assembly, he received from the Assembly the Constitution, and swore obedience to it. The representatives were inviolable, and he was not. We repeat it: a citizen responsible to all the citizens, he was, of the whole nation, the only man so bound. Hence, in this oath, sole and supreme, there was a solemnity which went to the heart. He who writes these lines was present in his place in the Assembly, on the day this oath was taken; he is one of those who, in the face of the civilized world called to bear witness, received this oath in the name of the people, and who have it still in their hands. Thus it runs: — "In presence of God, and before the French people, represented by the National Assembly, I swear to remain faithful to the democratic republic, one and indivisible, and to fulfil all the duties imposed upon me by the Constitution." The President of the Assembly, standing, read this majestic formula; then, before the whole Assembly, breathlessly silent and attentive, intensely expectant, Citizen Charles-Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte, raising his right hand, said, in a firm, loud voice: "I swear it!""

"In less than three years after this memorable day, on the 2nd of December, 1851, at daybreak, there might be read on all the street corners in Paris, this placard:— "In the name of the French people, the President of the Republic: "Decrees — "Article 1. The National Assembly is dissolved. "Article 2. Universal suffrage is re-established. The law of the 31st of May is repealed. "Article 3. The French people are convoked in their comitia. "Article 4. A state of siege is decreed throughout the first military division. "Article 5. The Council of State is dissolved. "Article 6. The Minister of the Interior is charged with the execution of this decree. "Done at the Palace of the Élysée, December 2, 1851."

"Those who, as representatives of the people, received, in trust for the people, the oath of the 20th of December, 1848, those, especially who, being twice invested with the confidence of the nation, had as representatives heard that oath sworn, and as legislators had seen it violated, had assumed, with their writ of summons, two duties. The first of these was, on the day when that oath should be violated, to rise in their places, to present their breasts to the enemy, without calculating either his numbers or his strength, to shelter with their bodies the sovereignty of the people and as a means to combat and cast down the usurper, to grasp every sort of weapon, from the law found in the code, to the paving stone that one picks up in the street. The second duty was, after having accepted the combat and all its chances to accept proscription and all its miseries, to stand eternally erect before the traitor, his oath in their hands, to forget their personal sufferings, their private sorrows, their families dispersed and maltreated, their fortunes destroyed, their affections crushed, their bleeding hearts; to forget themselves, and to feel thenceforth but a single wound — the wound of France to cry aloud for justice; never to suffer themselves to be appeased, never to relent, but to be implacable; to seize the despicable perjurer, crowned though he were, if not with the hand of the law, at least with the pincers of truth, and to heat red-hot in the fire of history all the letters of his oath, and brand them on his face. He who writes these lines is one of those who did not shrink, on the 2nd of December, from the utmost effort to accomplish the first of these two great duties; in publishing this book he performs the second."

"Le naturel est le sceau du génie."

"On ne rit plus, on sourit aujourd'hui, Et nos plaisirs sont voisins a l'eunui."

"Malheureux qui craint de rentrer Dans la retraite de son âme! Le coeur qui cherche a s'ignorer Redoute un censeur qui le blâme."

"L'amour sacré de la patrie."

"Quel triste élève de la Grè Pourrait, en voyant sa beauté, Préférer les lis de Lucrèce, Et les paleurs de la sagesse, Aux roses de la volupté?"

"Monseigneur, j'attendrai"

"I beg everyone from the highest to the lowest to forgive me; I have given them all much very bad example."

"Make use of this very simple aspiration: you and I, my love, you and I, you and I, and never another nor more! To which you could add some burning words like: "since you are entirely good and all goodness itself; since you are entirely glorious and all glory itself; since you are entirely holy and all holiness itself!"

"This is what the Son of God desires of you: that he might be able to embellish, perfect and gain you lustre with the fullness of his gifts. Since he is so taken by your Beauty, which flows and gushes from him to you, as I have said, what he desires of you is that he might have the supreme pleasure of an eternity enjoying you and his gifts. Thus, everyone who proceeds to live in a way that is contrary to his own self, lives in God; his whole being is God-orientated; he sees nothing but God and himself."

"My exercise consists in a total elevation of the spite above all created and sense-objects. By this exercise I am securely concentrated within myself and gaze steadily at God who in a simple manner draws me to the state of simple unity and nakedness of spirit, which is called “simple idleness.” In this state of simplicity of rest I am passively possessed and held above every sense-image. This rest remains mine, whether I am by myself doing nothing or whether I am engaged in activity that is exterior or interior and mental. This is what I can tell you about my interior life: my condition is simple, naked, darkened and without knowledge even of God, in nakedness and darkness of spirit. I am lifted above every kind of illumination existing below this level; in this state I cannot bring into play my interior faculties. They are all without exception drawn and held under the influence of this unique and simple “image.” This image, in fact, holds them in a state of naked simplicity above vision and essence at the highest level of spirit, beyond spirit. It is there that I find myself in the nakedness and darkness of the all-incomprehensible depths, incomprehensible because of their darkness, where everything of the senses, everything specific and created melts down and blend into the unity of spirit, or rather into the simplicity of essence or spirit."

"Love does not always choose the same dwelling place, it makes many exploits in men here below; It has its night, its day, and its many levels: only the one who has overall happiness is content. It moves, it suffers in God, its first cause and the unique happiness of the celestial Spirits; It is there that it is always equally enraptured, by the Seraphic love which is above all things."

"I have three homes here below, each very appealing: The Cross, Love, and the Sepulchre; all of them are to me as One, and raise me above nature, and above its wearisome hold."

"Tell me, my Life and my Spouse, this whole ineffable mystery, is it not rather for the admiration of the Seraphim, than for the expression of one like me, your spouse, who doesn’t know what to do about this, except to babble."

"In a word, frankly, I am in love with the love in my Spouse."

"I don’t want anything more than to be one of your spouses employed by you to announce that they languish for your love."

"Sing boldly, O spouses of a Bridegroom such as mine! you, I say, whom are my companions in this fate and enjoyment so happy as ours! Sing at my happy insistence as I will sing by yours, a new song containing endless praises of the infinitely excessive grandeur and love of our Bridegroom, coming to so admirably espouse us, to deiformly deify us of him and in him, and to make us oneself of oneself."

"What is all this? Let him conceive it if he can, express it if he knows how, if he desires to; if one can it is licit, but it is better to shut up as one should; because it is here that our intuitive joy, respectively and mutually in us both, speaks, not of this nor anything like it, but something infinitely other than this, by its profundity, and perpetual and ineffable silence."

"Of what sort is this truth in its accomplishment in us both, your spouses cannot lay their eyes on me without seeing that I am your cherished and unique bride, by the evident and manifest signs of your radiant and exuberant love, which manifestly flow from me to you, whether I perceive them or not, yet all my desire is to be perpetually within, hidden and known only to you who are my Bridegroom, my Life and my All."

"Aspiring then is an expression of love: a love so purely and radically expressed that it transcends all loves that are comprehensible by the senses, the reason or the intellect. By the impetuosity and force of the Spirit of God, it arrives at union with God, not by chance but by a sudden transformation of the spirit in God."

"Aspiration, practiced as a familiar, respectful and loving conversation with God, is such an excellent method, that, by means of it, one soon arrives at the summit of all perfection, and falls in love with Love."

"The way to attain love is to love. A less excellent love leads to a greater love, and a greater love in turn leads to the highest love, as well as to the most excellent and ultimate fruits of active love. Each of these degrees has its own theory and practice. All of them, especially the last degrees, possess a simple, exalted, and singular contemplation of the divine Object, which constantly exerts a powerful influence on the soul and ravishes it with delight."

"This love is so overpowering that the will alone enters the amorous bosom of love, where it savors an unutterable love beyond all understanding and expression. All the while, the dumbfounded intellect remains paralyzed at the gate."

"Such is the effect of love's flood rushing into its lovers. It sweeps them away, ravishes them, and swamps them in its waves. These people become love itself — its spirit, its divinity — insofar as it is possible for any creature in this life."

"The sight of the intuitive and ravishing Beauty of God holds her as if asleep in its delectable bosom...This state surpasses all human definition and comparison."

"This path is so delightful and delectable that anyone who knows it will lovingly travel it at his own cost and expense. Such happiness is beyond words."

"The worst of all human miseries is not to know God, not to feel Him, not to desire Him, not to taste Him."

"Whoever refuses to follow Christ in His poverty will never possess Him in the abundance of His graces and virtues in this life, nor in His glory in the next. To possess nothing and to be nothing is to be full of God."

"We cannot imagine what a great love the angels have for those who are truly chaste. They take such special care of them that the devils can harm them only with difficulty and from a distance."

"The obedience of those, purified in soul and body in the furnace of humiliation, is of infinite worth to God."

"Every soul, touched by God, feels and believes in the depths of its being that it is more sinful than all men together."

"The corruption of the world and of the worldliness is a consequence of the fact that men have no eye whatever for the majesty of God in and around themselves; therefore has God delivered them to the natural and brutal motions of their heart."

"The forgetting of all things and of one's self, combined with contemplation, makes a man divine"

"Love which is not humble is a devil."

"Desire, abide, suffer and die unknown for all time; this is true sanctity!"

"The heavenly Bridegroom allows small failings and common weaknesses in order to deliver his loved ones from pride."

"True solitude is in the soul. The soul has as its desert and homeland God Himself, the father and teacher of all souls"

"The more a person strives after God, the more earnest he will become--the les he will converse with men."

"Modesty enables physical deformity."

"No one can be a true mystic who is not thoroughly versed in the ways of nature. The more nature is attracted by spiritual favors, the more it is inclined to make itself the master of them. Nature always mingles its own spirit with the spirit of God. unless we keep a close watch over it, it will always remain so. Natures most subtle snare is to lead us to confuse what is licit with what is expedient. When we doubt the inspiration of an impulse, whether from grace or nature, we should picture a similar object which is without doubt acceptable to nature. If this representation pleases us, it is a sign that the first inclination also comes from nature and is consequently to be rejected."

"Whether great attraction and strong interior occupations are of nature or of grace can be known by the fact that they are accompanied by perfect rest or subtle disquiet."

"It is much more trying to be continually tormented by evil men than by devils."

"God takes such great pleasure in the sanctity of His saints that in the interests of a few, He often allows the whole Church to suffer great loss."

"Perfect contemplatives hear without astonishment all that the learned propound since they excel in a science transcending all understanding."

"Simplicity is the loving inclination of the soul elevated by God, Who efficaciously drawn it into His own heart. There He reduces all its faculties to unity of spirit, that it may live there, in a n abstract, simple and essential condition, without sensible desire to reason or think of order or disorder. It is continually lost in the eternity of God."

"Nothing ever astonishes the really simple person."

"Those who apply themselves more ardently to the practice of love, by that very face bring more devils upon their heads."

"If the visitations the soul receives are from God, it first feels fear, then gladness accompanied by a hunger and thirst for virtue. If they are from the devil, the soul at first feels gladness and thereafter remains in confusion and darkness. Whether the visitations be from God or from the devil, we should always despise and humiliate ourselves; God is exceedingly glad to visit the humble, but the devil cannot stomach them."

"The soul’s pleasure is to enter and to go forth: to enter into the profound abyss of God where it is irretrievably lost in the sight of his infinite grandeur and beauty which it contemplates continually with the eye of its understanding; and to go forth from there to the ravishing sight of our Savior, the God-Man, whom it is inspired to follow by a lively imitation both interiorly and exteriorly. p. 59"

"When the soul has been deeply touched, it is by love alone that it desires to be intimately joined to God. This is why we advocate reducing ardent aspiration to a few words, even to the mere word ‘love’. This love sends forth ardent and fiery flames with all its strength. As a result. A blazing divine fire is enkindled in the soul. It is in this way that God stirs up the soul and draws it strongly inward. p. 86"

"When you have acquired this excellent habit of love you will feel completely absorbed by it as it penetrates deeply into the center of your being. There you will be conscious of enjoying a taste and a gaze of such height, breadth, length, depth and simplicity that you will attain this state quite easily, without any effort on your part. p. 120"

"We have been created in order to return to God through love, through his own love. In us it must be ardent, pure and unceasingly active, so that we expend all our energies and are consumed by it. Actually, we shall never be able to do or give anything that can sufficiently recompense him who is infinite Love. Before him every creature is deceitful, and in comparison with him, man is nothing. p. 140"

"The method for practicing this ardent love is short and easy. Its subject is constant and loving aspiration. But to be perfect, aspiration must be practice so eagerly and continually that it becomes as easy as breathing. It has a number of degrees, all of which can be reduced to four. The first consists in offering oneself and all created things to God. As far as possible, this should be done in an abstract manner. The second degree consists in making requests of the divine Spouse, asking him for his gifts in him and for his own sake. The third degree consists in being resigned and completely conformed to him. This conformity is very lofty and perfect, and is characterized by a great love. Moreover, the soul also desires it for creatures who are capable of such exalted love. The fourth degree is that of unitive love which unites the soul to God. Here the souls yearns for him and pursues him with acts of love until he opens his loving and super essential bosom to it. Here it feast upon his immense beauty in great abundance and intoxication, eating and drinking at the table of the Blessed. But since this does not last very long, the soul soon returns to itself to feed upon its former spiritual fare. From this it derives renewed strength, until God again receives it into his bosom with the same effect."

"You are within, my Love, and I too am there with you and will be there constantly. No, I will never look for you outside, for you are not there. Rather will I retire into the deepest center of my being, where I shall possess you in a singular repose and delight. IN this simple union, we shall take the greatest delight in each other. And I shall rejoice only in this: that you are my God. With this I am happy, completely satisfied that you are such, and that you will never be understood by any created being. p. 183"

"It is a wonder that any religious at all preserves a love for the true spirit of religious life in the midst of all these adversaries, and remains resolved to be really spiritual in spite of them and even of hell itself. Although their number is small, it does not matter. These few sparks will help to keep the religious state alive to God's honor and glory. p. 188"

"“God destined him to be the brightest flame in our little company as regards spiritual things. It is no exaggeration to say that in this respect he was the St. John of the Cross of the new reform.”"

"John of Saint Samson insists very strongly on the mystical vocation of Carmelites. The active life should not have first place. Recalling that the rule demands a life of prayer; he chooses this prayer — "to be lost in the object of contemplation, God and the things of God." No doubt it is necessary to preach, study and work, but because of the dangers which exterior activity brings, it is necessary for young scholastics to exercise themselves intensely in the principal object of their vocation and establish themselves solidly in the practice of meditation and contemplation. Contemplation is still a pure gift of God; but it is important that we for our part remove all the obstacles and practice the virtues so that we may be found disposed in the way which God demands before giving his mystical favors. In this doctrine, human activity enjoys a considerable part; in its higher degrees, contemplation remains an absolutely gratuitous gift. Thus equilibrium is maintained between the school of acquired contemplation and that of infused contemplation. John is careful to note that perfection does not consist in ecstatic phenomena but in union with God who lives in us. This fire, which burns in us, sets us aflame, and the flame of our love is united to Divine Love which en flames our heart. It is necessary that Carmelites understand this vocation and prepare for it. As a means of arriving at the dispositions required by God, John counsels a form of prayer which the Francis can Henry Herp especially honored, namely, aspiration. It has four degrees: inhaling God, exhaling God, living in God, living by God. Entirely filled with God, we must hunger and thirst for God without ceasing and open our mouth to breathe God. We should start by offering ourselves and every creature to God."

"Soldiers of Verdun! It is your valour which has made this possible, for your heroic resistance was the indispensable condition to our success. Upon it still depends our future victory. Upon all the vast theatres of Europe, thanks to you, there now exists a situation out of which will spring the definite triumph of our cause. I make one more appeal to your courage, your ardour, your spirit of sacrifice, your love of country. Hold fast and strive with all your might to shatter the last desperate efforts of an enemy now at bay."

"I don't know who won the Battle of the Marne. But if it had been lost, I know who would have lost it."

"In one respect the Germans came remarkably close to their objective of annihilating the enemy. The total number of French dead by the end of December 1914 was 265,000; indeed their casualties of all types had already reached 385,000 by September 10. Not only that, but the French had lost a tenth of their field artillery and half a million rifles. Worst of all, a very substantial part of their heavy industrial capacity was now under enemy control. The puzzle is why these heavy losses did not lead to a complete collapse - as had happened in 1870 and would happen again in 1940. Some credit must certainly go to the imperturbable French Commander-in-Chief Joseph Joffre, and particularly to his ruthless purge of senescent or incompetent French commanders as the crisis unfolded. Fundamentally, however, time was against Moltke for the simple reason that the French could redeploy more swiftly than the Germans could advance once they had left their troop trains. On August 23 the three German armies on Moltke's right wing constituted twenty-four divisions, facing just seventeen and a half Entente divisions; by September 6 they were up against forty-one. The chance of a decisive victory was gone, if it had ever existed. At the Marne, the failure of Moltke's gamble was laid bare. He himself suffered a nervous breakdown."

"Those skilled in mathematical analysis know that its object is not simply to calculate numbers, but that it is also employed to find the relations between magnitudes which cannot be expressed in numbers and between functions whose law is not capable of algebraic expression."

"The employment of mathematical symbols is perfectly natural when the relations between magnitudes are under discussion; and even if they are not rigorously necessary, it would hardly be reasonable to reject them, because they are not equally familiar to all readers and because they have sometimes been wrongly used, if they are able to facilitate the exposition of problems, to render it more concise, to open the way to more extended developments, and to avoid the digressions of vague argumentation."

"Anyone who understands algebraic notation, reads at a glance in an equation results reached arithmetically only with great labour and pains."

"In the act of exchange, as in the transmission of power by machinery, there is friction to be overcome, losses which must be borne, and limits which cannot be exceeded."

"So far we have studies how, for each commodity by itself, the law of demand in connection with the conditions of production of that commodity, determines the price of it and regulates the incomes of its producers. We considered as given and invariable the prices of other commodities and the incomes of other producers; but, in reality the economic system is a whole of which the parts are connected and react on each other. An increase in the incomes of the producers of commodity A will affect the demand for commodities Band C, etc., and the incomes of their producers, and, by its reaction will involve a change in the demand for A. It seems, therefore, as if, for a complete and rigorous solution of the problems relative to some parts of the economic system, it were indispensable to take the entire system into consideration. But this would surpass the powers of mathematical analysis and of our practical methods of calculation, even if the values of all the constants could be assigned to them numerically."

"There are many anticipators of marginal analysis. Three major names were Augustin Cournot (1801-1877), J. H. von Thünen (1783-1850), and H. H. Gossen (1810-1858). Cournot's originality and ingenuity can hardly be exaggerated. In 200 small pages, he described and defined the downward-sloping , completely analyzed the maximization of profit under conditions of monopoly, advanced an ingenious explanation of pricing, proved that equilibrium price occurred when equaled , and exactly defined the market from which we call perfect competition and he called "unlimited competition." And the book went unread."

"It took from a hundred to a hundred and fifty or two hundred years for the astronomy of Kepler to become the astronomy of Newton and Laplace, and for the mechanics of Galileo to become the mechanics of d'Alembert and Lagrange. On the other hand, less than a century has elapsed between the publication of Adam Smith’s work and the contributions of Cournot, Gossen, Jevons, and myself."

"Faith makes us live by showing us that life, although it is dependent upon reason, has its well spring and source of power elsewhere, in something supernatural and miraculous. Cournot the mathematician, a man of singularly well-balanced and scientifically equipped mind has said that it is this tendency towards the supernatural and miraculous that gives life, and that when it is lacking, all the speculations of reason lead to nothing but affliction of the spirit. ...And in truth we wish to live."

"In 1823 he took a license degree in mathematics at Sorbonne University. He then became the private secretary of a field marshal who required assistance in writing his memoirs. This position must have left Cournot with considerable time for his own pursuits, for in the course of his ten years in the field marshal's employment he took two doctoral degrees, one in mechanics and one in astronomy. In addition, he published a number of articles and even acquired a degree in law."

"The art of taxation consists in so plucking the goose as to procure the largest quantity of feathers with the least possible amount of hissing."

"It is simply, and solely, the abundance of money within a state [which] makes the difference in its grandeur and power."

"Que faut-il faire pour vous aider? Laissez-nous faire!"

"As a rigid logician, [Colbert] cannot object to the reduction of his principles to a logical absurdity, which may be stated thus. The growth of French industry and commerce requires that a high standard of quality in the products be maintained. This standard can only be secured by Government regulation: this regulation can only be forced on an unwilling people by search for and exposure of defective goods: this search injures the trade which it is desired to promote, and disheartens the merchants and others whose zealous cooperation is of the last importance for the success of French industry and commerce. Of course the fallacy lies in the first statement, the assumption that an absolute standard of excellence exists, and that the producer is a better judge of it than the consumer."

"Sans la certitude de la propriété, le territoire resterait inculte."

"You recognize but one rule of commerce; that is (to avail myself of your own terms) to allow free passage and freedom of action to all buyers and sellers whoever they may be."

"Calculations are to the economic science what bones are to the human body. Without them it will always be a vague and confused science, at the mercy of error and prejudice."

"To secure the greatest amount of pleasure with the least possible outlay should be the aim of all economic effort... when everyone does this the natural order, instead of being endangered, will be all the better assured."

"Mr. Smith was well known to M. Quesnai, the profound and original author of the Economical Table; a man (according to Mr. Smith's account of him) "of the greatest modesty and simplicity;" and whose system of political economy he has pronounced, "with all its imperfections," to be "the nearest approximation to the truth that has yet been published on the principles of that very important science." If he had not been prevented by Quesnai's death, Mr. Smith had once an intention (as he told me himself) to have inscribed to him his Wealth of Nations."

"François Quesnay was the leading figure of the Physiocrats, generally considered to be the first school of economic thinking. The name “Physiocrat” derives from the Greek words phýsis, meaning “nature,” and kràtos, meaning “power.” The Physiocrats believed that an economy’s power derived from its agricultural sector. They wanted the government of Louis XV, who ruled France from 1715 to 1774, to deregulate and reduce taxes on French agriculture so that poor France could emulate wealthier Britain, which had a relatively laissez-faire policy. Indeed, it was Quesnay who coined the term “laissez-faire, laissez-passer.”"

"I have the weapons to do well here. I will need some time to adapt of course, but I am not worried about that. I think I will adapt well. I am a player who likes to play, who likes to participate in the game. That is why I think the way Arsenal play will suit me. I like scoring goals and Arsenal create a lot of chances, so if I do well, then we will do well."

"I had a look at the keeper and I was thinking that he was a bit too much forward from his line. I tried instinctively to shoot and to hit the target. I was a bit lucky but that's what I wanted to do."

"It was a good finish, he is a good finisher Olivier, but at the moment I believe he is looking for confidence and that goal will help him. I expect him to take that into the Premier League."

"Despite the incredible impact that Zlatan Ibrahimovic has had since arriving in France, it is impossible to look past Olivier Giroud's role in Montpellier's completely unexpected title win."

"Si Dieu me donne encore de la vie je ferai qu’il n’y aura point de laboureur en mon Royaume qui n’ait moyen d’avoir une poule dans son pot."

"Paris vaut bien une messe."

"I rule with my arse in the saddle and my gun in my fist."

"When the duke of Savoy came to France, the king invited him to play tennis at the faubourg Saint Germain. After the game, the duke looked out of a window towards a street and, seeing a large crowd, told the king that he could never sufficiently wonder at the beauty and wealth of France and asked him what the royal revenues were worth. This generous prince, deft at handling such questions, replied, "It is worth what I want." The duke, finding this reply too vague, asked him to be more specific. The king replied, "Yes, what I want, for I have the confidence of my people and I can take what I like for, if God grant me life, I will ensure that there is not a peasant in the kingdom without a chicken in the stewpot" and added "yet I will not neglect to maintain enough soldiers to bring to reason those who challenge my authority.""

"Throughout the Bourbon Restoration (1814–1830), Henri IV enjoyed a unique status in contemporary popular culture. Personification of royal authority, military hero, gallant lover, friend to the common man, this historical figure charmed many factions of the Restoration public. The widespread fascination with the monarch was manifest in virtually every form of creative production during this period, including the decorative arts. Henri IV was portrayed frequently and in a variety of media, ranging from ceramics and clocks to tapestries and printed textiles. Such diversity is indicative of the popularity of the first Bourbon as well as the range of his appeal."

"The site where the Statue of Good Henri had been located, belongs unquestionably to this people of the French, whom he called his children, who still cherish him as their father: they wish to raise again this fine monument; I have no doubt, I am convinced that you can all be assured that such an honorable plan will receive the support of every heart, and of all the authorities, by consequence, that of the superior authority."

"Henri IV was a gifted commander who saw more potential in mounted troops than any other captain of his day and was able to derive most advantage from them in combat, despite his limited resources. His special genius for new ways of employing his mounted troops both in armament and deployment forced even recognized military figures, such as the duke of Parma, to be respectful or even fearful of his skill. The king's contribution to the tactical development of the mounted arm was not unique, for he borrowed widely from the ideas of Gaspard de Coligny, Francois de La Noue, and other soldiers of his day; yet he was innovative in the way he modified and further developed these ideas to make his mounted troops a formidable tactical force. Indeed, he had a special talent for recognizing in the military theories and practices of other commanders what would work or not work on the battlefield, and what had promise but needed some alteration to become effective. This ability, when combined with Henri's imaginative leadership, made his cavalry the envy of late sixteenth-century Europe."

"That he finally subordinated his religious profession to his political needs is indisputable. But that he did so reluctantly and not until he had concluded in his own mind that there was no viable alternative to conversion if he were to retain his crown, is also clear. For he was a man of strong Calvinist conscience who demonstrated on more than one occasion that he was willing to defend his beliefs almost to the brink of political disaster. At the same time, however, he was a king who was as concerned with dynastic issues and affairs of state as any other ruler of his day, who felt keenly the heavy obligations of his royal role and who ultimately recognized that his personal religious beliefs must sometimes be sacrificed for the greater good of the dynasty and the realm. It is entirely possible, therefore, that the reflection of his closest counsellor, the duc de Sully, that the Huguenot monarch sacrificed an important part of his conscience to the benefit of his people is considerably less naive than historians have assumed."

"When the procession passed the street where Henry the Fourth was assassinated, every man paused as if by general consent: the cries of joy were suspended, and succeeded by a solemn silence. This tribute of regret, paid from the sudden impulse of feeling at such a moment, was perhaps the most honourable testimony to the virtues of that amiable Prince which his memory has yet received."

"Acceptance of Henri IV's sincerity demanded that the subject willingly abdicate any claim to participate in politics not framed exclusively by reference to the royal will and conscience. That act, more than anything else, crystallized the new relationship that later developed between the Bourbons and the Catholic élites in France during the seventeenth century. The enormous appeal of this new type of royal absolutism after the wars of religion largely rested on this call for a suspension of ethical inquiry by subjects into the king's motives and the arcana imperii of royal office. Such inquiry had come to be seen as detrimental to public order and social harmony, and therefore transgressed the bounds of legitimate public discussion. In the future, political power lay only with those who voluntarily resigned the responsible exercise of political authority to an absolute king sanctioned by a Catholic God. This simple formula and solution to the past troubles animated the Catholic élite's renewed commitment to the crown held by the converted Henri IV. In exchange for order, they embraced the new discipline that reserved the perquisites of power and status to those who participated in the cult of monarchy and the self-abnegating doctrine of service du roi. For Catholics all across France, the conversion of Henri IV at the abbey church of St-Denis on 25 July 1593 was plus que l'histoire événementielle. In it they saw at the time and for years afterwards a transcendent act of public and private redemption, an act that preserved the crown's sacred character and cleansed the king's person of the taint of heresy and moral degradation. Most importantly, the conversion of Henri IV reminded all loyal Frenchmen that they were truly among God's chosen people once they abandoned sedition and experienced a reconversion to la religion royale."

"Seen as a whole, the direction of theological thinking has been characterized by a transference away from attention to the being per se of supernatural realities, and toward attention to their relationship with man, with the world, and with the problems and the affirmations of all those who for us represent the others."

"Music is motion from nonrest to rest."

"I find him interesting, especially when played by Yvonne Loriod. The works of his I've heard often start magnificantly, but their initial promise is never realized, and you get these sugar-water climaxes that I can't stand. Splendid ideas, then suddenly Gershwin, cloying sweetness! Having said that, I like Gershwin a lot. He's excellent in his own field, and less sentimental than Messiaen."

"The weak have one weapon: the errors of those who think they are strong."

"Georges Bidault once said that a good diplomatic agreement was one with which all parties were equally dissatisfied."

"Philosophy always buries its undertakers."

"What is most apparent and constant in Thomas' personality, the image he most likely had of himself, is the teacher. The saint was essentially a Doctor of the Church; the man was a teacher of theology and philosophy; the mystic never entirely separated his meditations from his teaching, which drew its inspiration from them."

"We can only choose between two kinds of life, the active and the contemplative."

"Thomas considers that a religious may legitimately aspire to the title and functions of master, but since he could only teach divine things, it is only in relation to the science of divine things that secular sciences can legitimately interest him. This is demanded by the very essence of the contemplative life, the teaching of which is nothing but its immediate extension into the order of the active life."

"What, then, will this philosophy be? Thomas only employed it for the service it renders Christian wisdom. No doubt this is why he never thought of separating it from this wisdom and giving it a name. He probably did not foresee that the day would come when people would go through his works to extract the elements of a philosophy from his theology. He himself never attempted this synthesis."

"The mathematician always proceeds from thought to being or things. Consequently, critical idealism was born the day Descartes decided that the mathematical method must henceforth be the method for metaphysics."

"Indeed, all idealism derives from Descartes, or from Kant, or from both together, and whatever other distinguishing features a system may have, it is idealist to the extent that, either in itself, or as far as we are concerned, it makes knowing the condition of being."

"With Descartes the Cogito ergo sum [I think, therefore I am] turns into Cogito ergo res sunt [I think, therefore things are]."

"As used today, the word realism means in the first place the opposite to idealism when it claims that it is possible to pass from the subject to the object."

"Reality can be grasped at levels of different depths. It is immediately given to us in a kind of block form, which is simply the "apprehended reality"."

"While Descartes finds being in thought, Saint Thomas finds thought in being."

"Up to Descartes' time, and particularly during the Middle Ages, it had always been agreed that philosophy consisted in a transposition of reality into conceptual terms"

"Having left us with thought (not a soul), and extension (not a body), [Descartes] does not know how to account for the union of soul and body."

"Having expelled quality from the field of extension, [idealists] do not know how to account for it when it reappears in thought."

"Hume's skepticism, therefore, descends in a direct line from Cartesian mathematicism."

"If there is a single initial error at the root of all the difficulties philosophy is involved in, it can only be the one Descartes committed when he decreed, a priori, that the method of one of the sciences of reality was valid for the whole of reality."

"The scientific sterility of the Middle Ages has to be condemned for the same reasons which make it necessary today to condemn the philosophic sterility of scientism."

"If there is something more in a living being than a pure mechanism, Descartes is bound in advance to miss it."

"Most of our contemporaries think that, at bottom, being a philosopher and adopting an idealist method are one and the same thing."

"I maintain, therefore, that just as there is in Cartesianism a methodical idealism, the kind that starts with nosse [knowing], there can be a methodical realism, the kind that starts with esse [being]."

"Every given reality implies the thought which apprehends it. Therefore being is the condition of knowing; knowing is not the condition of being."

"The realist method starts with the whole in order to distinguish the parts."

"All realism derives from the analysis of knowledge; all idealism derives from the analysis of a thought."

"Gilson criticizes attempts to trace Dante's position back to Thomism or Averroism. For St. Thomas, every hierarchy of dignity is at the same time a hierarchy of jurisdiction, while for Dante—except for God—a hierarchy of dignity is never the foundation of a hierarchy of jurisdiction, and this corresponds to Dante's specific philosophical problem, which is not so much to define the essence of philosophy as to determine functions and jurisdictions. The principle governing this determination is absolutely irreconcilable with Thomism. St. Thomas knows only one ultimate end: eternal bliss, which can only be attained through the Church; moreover, the spirituality of the ultimate end implies that between temporal and spiritual power there is a hierarchical subordination of the means to the end. For Dante, on the other hand, man can obtain, through the exercise of political virtues, a human happiness completely distinct from heavenly bliss, even if the latter represents a higher end. The thesis of the “duo ultima” legitimizes the complete distinction between the political order and the religious order, which is equally universal to that of the Church, but autonomous and pursuing an end of earthly happiness."

"It is not that Dante intends to combat the cupiditas of the clergy in order to save the autonomy of the State; rather, “it is the struggle against cupiditas, the need to thoroughly permeate public life with religion, that leads him to distinguish between the orders.” In other words, the central point of his thinking, which leads him to overcome both Guelphism and Ghibellinism, is "the intuition of the concordance between the affirmation of the autonomy of the Empire, hitherto supported by heterodox thinkers, and that of the purification of the Church affirmed by spiritual writers," which is in line with what the best interpreter of Dante's philosophy, Étienne Gilson, defines as the singular and unique feature of his thought, irreducible to any source."

"I had to wait 110 years to become famous... I intend to enjoy it as long as possible."

"I see badly, I hear badly, and I feel bad, but everything's fine."

"I took pleasure when I could... I acted clearly and morally and without regret. I'm very lucky."

"I wait for death... and journalists."

"I have got only one wrinkle, and I am sitting on it."

"I had a hell of a lot of will power! A hell of a will power, you understand? And it was very useful to me."

"Every age has its happiness and troubles."

"I have a rather masculine nature. I'm not afraid of anything."

"Tu seras invendable à perpétuité, l'Invendable, dans tes livres aussi bien que dans ta personne, et ainsi se réalisera tout à fait la séparation, naturellement désirée par toi, d'avec les vendeurs et les gens à vendre."

"Woe to him who has not begged! There is nothing more exalted than to beg. God begs. The Angels beg. Kings, Prophets, and Saints beg."

"Ah! The happy ones of this world who are assured their daily bread—that is, all the things necessary to bodily life—and who, not wishing to know Jesus, have never for one single instant had the idea of suffering for their brothers, of sacrificing themselves for the wretched: ah! indeed! such people are assuredly well qualified to judge me and to reproach me for not having what the world calls dignity!"

"My anger is the effervescence of my pity."

"Unhappy writer, you had dreamt of winning souls and you have won nothing but ears!"

"You had hoped that the beloved and noble images flowing from your heart would serve as a river to carry to God many another heart! But, as you see, people are afraid of getting wet."

"One sees the world's evil accurately only by exaggerating it."

"A perfectly true thought, expressed in very sound terms, can satisfy the reason without giving any impression of the Beautiful; but in that case certainly there is something false in its statement. It is essential that Truth be in Glory. Splendor of style is not a luxury. It is a necessity."

"Of course the avaricious man of our day, be he landlord, merchant, industrialist, does not adore sacks of coins or bundles of banknotes in some little chapel and upon some little altar. He does not kneel before these spoils of other men, nor does he address prayers or canticles to them amidst odorous clouds of incense. But he proclaims that money is the only good, and he yields it all his soul. A cult sincere, without hypocrisy, never growing weary, never forsworn. Whenever he says, in the debasement of his heart and his speech, that he loves money for the delights it can purchase, he lies or he terribly deceives himself, this very assertion being belied at the very moment he utters it by every one of his acts, by the infinite toil and pains to which he gladly condemns himself in order to acquire or conserve that money which is but the visible figure of the Blood of Christ circulating throughout all His members."

"Of the truths which embarrass him he thinks it better to remain unaware."

"The Bourgeois who has religious feelings sees very clearly the absolute necessity of serving two masters at the same time in order to achieve success in his business, which naturally comes before everything else."

"I see from time to time coins that are tinted with red, having been handled by a butcher or a murderer, and the sight of that money makes me wonder. As I think about the probable origin of that sign of wealth, I tell myself that that is indeed its true color, the color which it should, which it must have, the color that was doubtless taken on by Judas’s pieces of silver, after which he ceased to recognize them and returned them at once to the egregious scoundrels who had given them to him. These, not recognizing the pieces themselves, did not want to return to the treasury of the Temple money so strange in its color. Everyone knows they used it to buy the field of blood, a generic name which I imagine can be applied to all bourgeois holdings ever since the Scourging and Crucifixion of Jesus Christ."

"The rich have a horror of Poverty because they have a dim foreboding of the expiatory interchange implied by her presence."

"The exercise of freedom consists in stripping oneself of one's own will."

"You are always on the right side when you are with those who suffer persecution and injustice."

"Any Christian who is not a hero is a pig."

"There is only one tragedy in the end, not to have been a saint."

"The worst thing is not to commit crimes but, rather, not to accomplish the good that one could have done. It is the sin of omission, which is nothing other than to be unloving, and no one accuses himself of it."

"Suffering passes, but the fact of having suffered never passes."

"It is the small flock of God. "Whoever receives in my name one of those little" said Jesus, "It is myself who receives." What thinks the one that sticks, that maims, or inflicts to their pure souls more black sorrow than death? (...) The curse of a crowd of children, is a cataclysm, a horror prodigy, a chain of dark mountains in the sky, with a cavalcade of thunder and lightning in their tops. It is the infinite of the cries of all deep, is a not know what highly powerful unforgiving and extinguishing any hope of forgiveness."

"Love does not make you weak, because it is the source of all strength, but it makes you see the nothingness of the illusory strength on which you depended before you knew it."

"Whoever does not pray to God, prays to the devil."

"My secret," he would say to me, "consists in loving with my whole soul, to the point of giving my life for them, the souls called to read me some day."

"Bloy ... believed that those who are wealthy and who keep their wealth for themselves even as the poor continue to suffer and perish, are in God's eyes the murderers of their brothers and sisters."

"His violence was the obverse of a charity lashed by incomparable storms, which had reached the end of its patience."

"Instead of being a whited sepulchre like the Pharisees of all times, he was a charred blackened cathedral."

"He [ Renoir; Maillol made his bust] was very interested, watching me do his bust. He said to me: 'Every time you touch it, it becomes more alive.'"

"Mademoiselle, I am told that you look like a Renoir and Maillol [as a model]. I would be happy with a Renoir."

"I seek beauty, not character. For me portraiture and statuary are completely opposed to each other."

"My sculpture is altogether different from Rodin’s.. ..In sculpture he [Rodin] always sees the flesh first. [answering his critics]"

"The first thing that strikes [one] in Cézanne is not apples, but balance of tones. With elements drawn from nature, what did [Cézanne] attempt? To create, to arouse powerful feeling, to awaken in the hearts of men that which is eternal in men."

"Art is complex, I said to Rodin, who smiled because he felt that I was struggling with nature.. ..the beauty of Rodin’s art is.. ..in the thoughts he embodied. As for me, I just take a walk on the beach. A young girl appears. From that girl walking there emanates a soul. That is That is at I want to give my statue, that thing alive, yet immaterial. In composing the figure of one young girl I must give the impression that there are all young girls. From the spirit, my feeling passes into my fingers"

"I make [figures] in which I try to give an impression of the whole."

"A [figure] interests me when I can bring architecture out of it."

"The particular does not interest me; I find meaning only in a general idea. In Michelangelo one is carried away by the idea of power, the whole single-minded concept he imposed on himself. The 'Slaves' and the 'Medici tombs' are sculpture made to be seen only from one side. For me, sculpture means the block; my figure of 'France' has more than twenty different sides. When I enlarged it only four were left, and I had to rework it.."

"I have a weakness for Egyptian sculpture: its figures are sculptured gods, sculptured ideas. Very different in expression, Hindu sculpture is based on very similar assumptions.. .The oriental people are much more artistic than we. When nations grow old, their art grows complicated and soft."

"We should try to return to our youth, to work naively; this is what I see, and it is why I have such success, because our century has tried to return to the primitive. I work as if no art had ever been made, before me, as if I had never learned anything. I am the first man to do sculpture."

"Negro art contains more ideas than Greek art. Its strange inventiveness of form is astonishing, and its imagination and extraordinary sense of decoration are difficult to explain. We dare not take such liberties; but the Negroes have succeeded. We are too much the subjects of our own past.."

"Those who do Negro-sculpture in this country are wrong. We are in France; in the country of Ronsard, La Fontaine, and Racine. What connection is there between this country and these men, and Negro sculpture? An artist can only create in accordance with the character of his people and his time."

"When Picasso does pure painting he is a great artist. When he paints as an cubist, putting one tone next to another, the arrangement of planes is fine and the result very strong. But those who imitate him achieve nothing worthwhile."

"For my taste, sculpture should have as little movement as possible. It should not fall, and gesture, and grimace, and if one depicts movement, grimaces come too easily. Rodin himself remains quiet; he puts movement into his rendering of muscles, but the whole remains quiet and calm."

"The more immobile Egyptian statues are, the more it seems as if they would move.. ..immobility of the body does not mean immobility of the flesh; in my model for the monument to Cézanne the whole figure is quiet, but there are several movements in the torso."

"w:Donatello's art does not come out of nature, it belongs to the studio. He exaggerates to make it lifelike. His weeping children grimace frightfully.. .When movement is excessive it is frozen: it no longer represents life."

"The immobility that the artist creates is not at all that of the photograph. A worth of art contains latent life, possibility of movement; a grimace made eternal does not represent life. One always talks of w:Donatello, but never of della Quercia. Yet della Qercia invented w:Michelangelo’s style before Michelangelo."

"[Maillol] represents plastic form in its essential massiveness, to allow it to stand resolutely and assertively in space. A torso by Maillol is a palpable reality; we may apprehend it visually, but the eye is not.. ..flattered."

"Like Claudel, Maillol has experienced doubt and despair and bitter disillusion.. ..but we who admire his works today forget the toil and suffering.. ..when we are in front of a piece of his work, we seem to share the.. ..joy which inspired his fingers when they touched the clay or the chisel."

"These archaic ideas, Greek, were the great novelty Maillol brought into the tendency of modern sculpture. What you need to love from the ancients is not the antiquity, it is the sense of permanent, renewed novelty, that is due to the nature and reason."

"The themes of childhood, love and joy underlie the works of both Claudel and Maillol – and like Claudel Maillol retained his purity of soul and his clarity of vision during his troubled years."

"Le juste milieu."

"La charte sera désormais une vérité."

"Entente cordiale"

"The cordial agreement"

"I will never allow a Prince, who should only be there to hold the stirrup for Bonaparte's family, to become King of a neighboring realm."

"Under a cabinet constitution at a sudden emergency this people can choose a ruler for the occasion. It is quite possible and even likely that he would not be ruler before the occasion. The great qualities, the imperious will, the rapid energy, the eager nature fit for a great crisis are not required—are impediments—in common times. A Lord Liverpool is better in everyday politics than a Chatham—a Louis Philippe far better than a Napoleon. By the structure of the world we want, at the sudden occurrence of a grave tempest, to change the helmsman—to replace the pilot of the calm by the pilot of the storm."

"King Louis Philippe once said to me that he attributed the great success of the British nation in political life to their talking politics after dinner."

"Ce que la nature fait avec beaucoup de temps, nous le faisons tous les jours, en changeant nous-mêmes subitement, par rapport à un végétal vivant, les circonstances dans lesquelles lui et tous les individus de son espèce se rencontroient."

"On sait que cet animal, le plus grand des mammifères, habite l'intérieur de l'Afrique, et qu'il vit dans des lieux où la terre, presque toujours aride et sans herbage, l'oblige de brouter le feuillage des arbres, et de s'efforcer continuellement d'y atteindre. Il est résulté de cette habitude soutenue depuis longtemps, dans tous les individus de sa race, que ses jambes de devant sont devenues plus longues que celles de derrière, et que son col s'est tellement allongé, que la girafe, sans se dresser sur ses jambes de derrière, élève sa tête et atteint à six mètres de hauteur"

"Life, in a body whose order and state of affairs can make it manifest, is assuredly, as I have said, a real power that gives rise to numerous phenomena. This power has, however, neither goal nor intention. It can do only what it does; it is only a set of acting causes, not a particular being. I was the first to establish this truth at a time when life was still thought to be a principle, an archeia, a being of some sort."

"Unhappily, a love of walls has seized you; unhappily, the Church of God which you venerate exists in houses and buildings; unhappily, under these you find the name of peace. Is it doubtful that in these Antichrist will have his seat? Safer to me are mountains, and woods, and lakes, and dungeons, and whirlpools; since in these prophets, dwelling or immersed, did prophesy."

"The Son of God is nailed to the cross; but on the cross God conquers human death. Christ, the Son of God, dies; but all flesh is made alive in Christ. The Son of God is in hell; but man is carried back to heaven."

"Many are kept within the pale of the church by the fear of God; yet they are tempted all the while to worldly faults by the allurements of the world. They pray, because they are afraid; they sin, because it is their will. The fair hope of future life makes them call themselves Christians; the allurements of present pleasure make them act like heathen. They do not abide in ungodliness, because they hold the name of God in honour; they are not godly because they follow after things contrary to godliness. ... These, then, are they whom the judgment awaits which unbelievers have already had passed upon them and believers do not need... and their judgment arises from the fact that, though they loved Christ, they yet loved darkness more. (John 3:18-19)"

"The divine Nature feels no pain. ... although He underwent the sufferings in all the fullness of their force, which necessarily causes pain to the sufferers, yet He never so abandoned the powers of His Nature as to feel pain."

"Saint Hilary was a Christian who bowed not to the power of the world, but to the Kingdom of God."

"My brother, who hath well concluded, that the union of Hearts, in these times of danger, is as necessary as the forces of the Kingdome, to oppose with the more puissance, the Enemies of the greatnesse of this Crowne, and its tranquilitie."

"His intestines were inflamed and ulcerated, making digestion virtually impossible; tuberculosis had spread to his lungs, accompanied by habitual cough. Either of these major ailments, or the accumulation of minor problems, may have killed him, not to mention physiological weaknesses that made him prone to disease or his doctors' remedies of enemas and bleedings, which continued right to his death."

"It is easy to see where North America stands at present, and whither it is tending. Its rapid progress, due to the most degrading works, has fascinated Europe; but the results of this progress, exclusively material, already appear. Barbarism, profligacy, general bankruptcy, systematic destruction of the native races, idiotic slavery of the conquerors, bound to the most trying and repulsive of lives under the yoke of their own machinery. America might founder in the ocean once for all, and the human race would suffer no loss thereby. Not a saint, not an artist, not a thinker has it produced, unless one may term thought the aptitude for twisting iron for the construction of freight trains. The priests who wear out their lives there cannot create a civilization. Thus far there is no civilization in America, and as far as appearances go, there never will be."

"Newspapers have become such a danger that it is necessary to create many. You cannot contend against the Press, except through its multitude. Add flood to flood, and let them drown one another, forming no more than a swamp, or, if you will, a sea. The swamp has its lagoons, the sea its moments of slumber. We will see whether it is possible to build some Venice within it."

"When I voted, my equality tumbled into the box with my ballot; they disappeared together."

"If I could re-establish a class of nobles, I should do so at once, and I would not belong to it."

"Amongst the amusements of Paris must be counted duels between journalists."

"Quand les libéraux sont au pouvoir, nous leur demandons la liberté, parce que c’est leur principe, et, quand nous sommes au pouvoir, nous la leur refusons, parce que c’est le nôtre"

"The great art of the legislator consists, not in proposing many laws, but in rendering their execution easy; not in reigning over men by terror, but in rendering himself master through wisdom and the mildness of government; not in establishing inquisitorial commissions in order to find the greatest number of guilty, but in principally striking the chief conspirators and being indulgent towards weak and repentant citizens who have gone astray. If a people is in a state of revolution or not, its principles are those of eternal reason, of eternal justice. As Robespierre observed: Tyranny cannot save the state and freedom. When laws are made retroactive, when we multiply without any need violent measures, we announce ourselves to be ignorant or cruel. Fear only engenders slaves; humanity alone makes the conquest of liberty, and only crime should be punished on earth."

"Ah! This movement of force and energy, this love of happiness, this plan of courage amid the insane who surround us attests to the strength of reason, which has imperceptibly advanced across the centuries. So many sublime outbursts of patriotism on the part of the French prove that servitude is an outrage to the dignity of human nature, and that there is no nation on earth that can return them to their former slavery."

"If corrupted representatives, faithless administrators, prevaricating agents hadn’t been able to form from one pole to the other a chain of conspirators to fool the people, lull them at the edge of the abyss and complete their ruin; if infamous deserters from the public thing, rebellious children, hadn’t been able to pierce the breast of the motherland and halt liberty in its triumphant march; if the scoundrel faction that dominated the three legislatures hadn’t called down on France the plagues of war and famine; if they hadn’t delivered our forts and our patriotic phalanxes to the steel of executioners, the laws of humanity would be recognized everywhere, liberty would have conquered the world, and there wouldn’t exist a single throne on earth."

"When France fought under kings and for kings it was intrepid and great; today when it fights for the people, for freedom, for the triumph of laws of its making; today, when it only takes out its sword at the call of justice, it must only sheath it at the song of victory, let us carry the pride of Spartans and the courage of Brutus as a tribute to the fatherland. Let our weapons be, not the honor that allied itself to crime, as among the nobles, but the love of equality and the hatred of tyrants. He who dies for the liberty of his country, lives eternally in glory. There is no destiny as glorious as that of crushing despotism, that of smashing, pulverizing, and annihilating those illustrious brigands, those decorated cowards who want to master us with so much pride and cruelty."

"Freedom is nothing but a vain phantom when one class of men can starve another with impunity. Equality is nothing but a vain phantom when the rich, through monopoly, exercise the right of life or death over their like. The republic is nothing but a vain phantom when the counter-revolution can operate every day through the price of commodities, which three quarters of all citizens cannot afford without shedding tears."

"For the last four years the rich alone have profited from the advantages of the Revolution. The merchant aristocracy, more terrible than that of the noble and sacerdotal aristocracy, has made a cruel game of invading individual fortunes and the treasury of the republic; we still don’t know what will be the term of their exactions, for the price of merchandise rises in a frightful manner, from morning to evening. Citizen Representatives, it is time that the combat unto death that the egoist carries out against the hardest working class of society come to an end. Pronounce against speculators and monopolists: either they’ll obey your decrees or they won’t. In the first hypothesis you will have saved the fatherland; in the second case you will still have saved the fatherland, for we will have been able to identify and strike the bloodsuckers of the people."

"The freedom of commerce is the right to use and to make use of, and not the right to tyrannize and prevent use. Those goods necessary to all should be delivered at a price accessible to all. Pronounce then...the sans-culottes with their pikes will execute your decrees ..."

"Up to the present moment the big merchants who are, by principle criminals and by habit accomplices of kings, have abused the freedom of commerce to oppress the people; they have falsely interpreted that article of the Declaration of the Rights of Man that establishes that it is permitted to do all that is not forbidden by the law. Well then, decree constitutionally that speculation, the sale of minted money, and monopolies are harmful to society. The people, who know their true friends, the people who have suffered for such a long time, will see that you are sorrowed by their lot and that you seriously want to cure their ills. When it will have a clear and precise law in the constitutional act against speculation and monopolies it will see that the cause of the poor is closer to your hearts than that of the rich; it will see that there don’t sit among you bankers, arms merchants and monopolists; finally, it will see that you don’t want the counter-revolution."

"Deputies of the Mountain: No! No! You will not leave your work in a state of imperfection. You will found the bases for public prosperity; you will not consecrate the general and repressive principles of speculation and monopoly; you will not give to your successors the terrible example of the barbarism of powerful men over the weak, of the rich over the poor. You will not end your career in infamy."

"De toutes choses ne m'est demeuré que l'honneur et la vie qui est saulve."

"Souvent femme varie, Mal habil qui's fie"

"A good Prince ought to make his passions subservient to the interest of his country, for all things are either good or bad for him as they regard his people; but Francis had been bred up with different sentiments from these, flattery the bane of all princes had poisoned his mind; he instead of regarding the affairs of his country, totally gave himself to pleasure, which was the reason all his military operations met with such frequent delays."

"Summitry was now reaching its premodern heyday, for reasons relevant to our larger story.Although by about 1500 several strong national states had emerged in Europe, they remained greatly dependent on their monarchs. This kind of personalized power is at the heart of summitry. One of the most famous encounters took place on the so-called Field of the Cloth of Gold in June 1520, toward the summit bringing together Henry VIII of England and François I of France. The young English monarch, whose titles still included “King of France,” had resumed the old struggle in 1512. But his advisor Cardinal Thomas Wolsey secured a truce and then arranged a summit to consummate an enduring peace. It took place on the edge of Calais, the last English enclave in France, in a shallow dip known as the Val d’Or. Both sides of the valley were carefully reshaped to ensure that neither party enjoyed a height advantage. A special pavilion was constructed for the meeting and festivities, surrounded by thousands of tents and a three-hundred-foot-square timber castle for the rest of those attending. Henry’s entourage alone numbered more than five thousand, while the French crown needed ten years to pay off its share of the cost."

"At the appointed hour on June 7, 1520, the Feast of Corpus Christi, the two monarchs with their retinues in full battle array appeared on the opposite sides of the valley. There was a moment of tense silence—each side feared an ambush by the other. Then the two kings spurred their horses forward to the appointed place marked by a spear in the ground and embraced. The ice was broken. They dismounted and went into the pavilion arm in arm to talk.Then began nearly two weeks of jousting, feasting and dancing that culminated in a High Mass in the open air. Choirs from England and France accompanied the mass and there was a sermon on the virtues of peace. n both choreography and cost, the Field of the Cloth of Gold resembles contemporary summits. In a further similarity, style was more important than substance: by 1521 the two countries were at war again. In many ways they were natural rivals, whereas Henry was bound—by marriage and interest—to France’s enemy Charles V, king of Spain. Both before and after the Cloth of Gold Henry met Charles for discussions of much greater diplomatic magnitude. And although Wolsey hoped the meeting of the British and French elites might build bridges, this soon proved an illusion. As the Cloth of Gold demonstrated, egos were everything in these summits, with each side alert to any hint of advantage gained summits by the other. Commines was implacably opposed to such meetings for this very reason. It was, he said, impossible “to hinder the train and equipage of the one from being finer and more magnificent than the other, which produces mockery, and nothing touches any person more sensibly than to be laughed at.”"

"Here below, God is the feeblest and most destitute of beings; his love, unlike that of idols, does not fill the carnal part of the soul."

"The hero wears armor, the saint is naked."

"Do not run or fly away in order to become free. Rather, go deeply into the narrow space given you. There you will find God and all things."

"This Poulenc recital was extremely interesting, in terms of both the choice of works and the high standard of the performers, all of whom are excellent musicians. With the exception of the sonata (or concerto) for two pianos, all the works were new to me, and so I got to know lots of new things, most of them charming and elegant, if occasionally not without a touch of sentimentality. I don't consider Poulenc a particularly great composer, but I understand the love that the French feel for him and am not far from sharing it with them."

"God protect me from my friends, I can protect myself from my enemies. [Variation: Defend me from my friends; I can take care of my enemies myself]."

"I am going to fight your enemies, I leave you in the midst of my own."

"Do you want to know where Prince Eugene’s real enemies are? They are in Vienna, while mine are in Versailles."

"A general has to expose his life as much as he exposes the lives of others."

"What! Is it expected that I, a Marshal of France, should be the first to escalade, when I order you to attack?"

"When the first shot is fired, no one can calculate what will be the issue of the war. It is, therefore, of vast importance to reflect maturely before we begin it."

"When we are determined upon war, we should carry it on vigorously and without trifling."

"In war everything depends upon being able to deceive the enemy; and having once gained this point, in never allowing him time to recover himself."

"My principal attention was always directed to the study of the younger generals. Such a one I found, by the boldness of his character, fit to lead a column of attack; another, from a disposition naturally cautious, but without being deficient in courage, more perfectly to be relied on for the defence of a country."

"No governor of a place should he permitted to excuse himself for surrendering, on the ground of wishing to preserve the king's troops. Every garrison that displays courage will escape being prisoners of war. For there is no general who, however well assured of carrying a place by assault, will not prefer granting terms of capitulation rather than risk the loss of a thousand men in forcing determined troops to surrender."

"If God lets us have the grace of losing such a battle again, Your Majesty can count on all of his enemies being destroyed."

"I am going to drive your enemies so far that they shall not again see the banks of the Scheldt; and by a battle on my arrival, to regain all that has been taken from your majesty."

"I was unable before starting to formulate a plan of campaign because I did not know whether I should find an army there ... In fact I found the troops in a deplorable condition, without clothes, without arms, and without bread."

"Where there are no peasants there are no supplies."

"My friends ... if you make the people run away, you will die of hunger."

"[Your nation] seems immovable, never doing glorious things but by halves, and never disgracing itself."

"The most shameful, humiliating and disastrous of routs."

"Fortify your towns, and above all the Schellenberg, that fort above Donauworth, the importance of which the great Gustavus taught us."

"Villars was a being into every atom of whose texture vanity and valour entered in equal proportions. Both were serviceable to his country in those dark days. He boasted, he postured, he gesticulated, but at the same time he organized, inspired, and acted. His self-admiration was matched by his patriotism. He was a greathearted braggart. When disasters befell the armies on other fronts he was heard to exclaim, “I can't be everywhere.” His indomitable ardour in facing adversity and the foe was of the highest service to his country."

"He wanted very little to be a perfect general. Choosing an extremely advantageous position was one of his great talents."

"He foresees and provides for everything. He is the first Munitioner and Treasurer of his army. He has obtained the King's leave not to pass things through the channel of the Minister of War, who is an imbecile. He has himself formed a body of six munitioners for the army."

"He knew by heart the beautiful plays of Corneille, Racine, and Molière. I heard him say one day to a very famous statesman, who was surprised that he knew so many lines of comedy: "I played less than you, but I know more!""

"A fanfaron plein d'honneur."

"I have found heaven on earth, since heaven is God and God is in my soul. The day I understood that, everything became clear to me, and I would like to share this secret with all those I love so that they, too, might cling to God through everything, so that this prayer of Christ might be fulfilled: "Father, may they be made perfectly one!""

""Remain in Me." It is the Word of God who gives this order, expresses this wish. Remain in Me, not for a few moments, a few hours which must pass away, but "remain..." permanently, habitually, Remain in Me, pray in Me, adore in Me, love in Me, suffer in Me, work and act in Me."

""Abyss calls to abyss." It is there in the very depths that the divine impact takes place, where the abyss of our nothingness encounters the Abyss of mercy, the immensity of the all of God. There we will find the strength to die to ourselves and, losing all vestige of self, we will be changed into love."

""Because I love My Father, I do always the things that are pleasing to Him." Thus spoke our holy Master, and every soul who wants to live close to Him must also live this maxim. The divine good pleasure must be its food, its daily bread; it must let itself be immolated by all the Father's wishes in the likeness of His adored Christ. Each incident, each event, each suffering, as well as each joy, is a sacrament which gives God to it; so it no longer makes a distinction between these things; it surmounts them, goes beyond them to rest in its Master, above all things."

"Without form or comeliness, and nailed to the cross—thus is truth to be adored."

"Anyone who delights in praise destroys it."

"Prepare your mind to live in the company of evil people, with your mind unsullied; to do this is to live like an angel."

"The more noble and powerful a creature is, the more willingly it submits to the truth. Indeed it is powerful and noble precisely because of its submission."

"To want good things even for the wicked is a characteristic of saints."

"Humility is the good and solid foundation of virtues; should it waver, the whole house of virtues collapses."

"With such simple tools the patient Hindu, thanks to his industry, can produce specimens of work which are often not to be distinguished from those imported at great expense from foreign countries."

"It must be admitted that the laws of etiquette and social politeness are much more clearly laid down, and much better observed by all classes of Hindus, even by the lowest, than they are by people of corresponding social position in Europe."

"And there is no stronghold of evil so impregnable as Brahmins."

"I have never seen anything in the history of the Egyptians and Jews," writes Abbe Dubois, forty years a resident of India, "that would induce me to believe that either of these nations, or any other on the face of the earth, have been established earlier than the Hindus, and particularly the Brahmans; so I cannot be induced to believe that the latter have drawn their rites from foreign nations. On the contrary, I infer that they have drawn them from an original source of their own. Whoever knows anything of the spirit and character of the Brahmans, their stateliness, their pride, and extreme vanity, their distance, and sovereign contempt for everything that is foreign, and of which they cannot boast to have been the inventors, will agree with me that such a people cannot have consented to draw their customs and rules of conduct from an alien country."

"But there is this vast difference between the ancient philosophers and the modern sages of India, that the former were too few in number to influence the public mind, and had not sufficient support, to combat successfully the errors into which the multitude had fallen ; whereas the Brahmans, from their numbers and the high consideration in which they are held, if they seriously desired it, and if their interest and passions. did not run the other way, might throw down by a single effort, the whole edifice of idolatry in India, and substitute without difficulty, in its room, the knowledge and worship of the true God; of whom they themselve still preserves the loftiest conceptions."

"In 1823, Dubois published a book titled—‘Letters on the State of Christianity in India’, which contained a short phrase—‘In which the conversion of the Hindoos is considered as impracticable’."

"[Dubois opined that Bible translations will] ‘expose the Christian religion and its followers to the ridicule of the public’."

"My great surprise is that the crisis in the Church has been so long. We had prayed that the good Lord would send us a truly Catholic Pope, a holy Catholic Pope, just a few years after my consecration, and here we are, 19 years, and it is the same. It is a great disappointment. The crisis lags, and we have to continue to fight. That is the great difficulty – not for me, but for the faithful especially. The faithful have to be heartened, they must be encouraged not to be fatigued, to be tired. We must continue to fight."

"He’s a very good person, a very pious person. He has a good mind and was a good student. You know, he was always very good to me. I never had any trouble with him. He was just liked by everybody and was a very humble person but just very timid. I just think that—no matter what he thinks, he will cave into whatever is the agenda of the SSPX."

"I shall spend every moment loving. One who loves does not notice her trials; or perhaps more accurately, she is able to love them. Why must we suffer? Because here below pure Love cannot exist without suffering. O Jesus, Jesus, I no longer feel my cross when I think of yours."

"God has filled our hearts with desires so vast and so magnificent that nothing in creation is capable of satisfying them. Thus it is that in the hope of finding some pleasure, we attach ourselves to created objects and that we have no sooner possessed and sampled that which we have so ardently desired than we turn to something else, hoping to find what we wanted. We are, then, through our own experience, constrained to admit that it is but useless for us to want to derive our happiness here below from transient things. If we hope to have any consolation in this world, it will only be by despising the things which are passing and which have no lasting value and in striving towards the noble and happy end for which God has created us. Do you want to be happy, my friends? Fix your eyes on Heaven; it is there that your hearts will find that which will satisfy them completely."

"It is not medicine we should fear, but the folly of mankind. Every day, the experience of our predecessors increases our ability to change nature by using its own laws. But using this power wisely is what each generation must learn in its turn. We are certainly more powerful today than ever before, but we are no wiser: Technology is cumulative, wisdom is not."

"The grace of God can do all things, but in face of so many moral miseries... one sees clearly that human means are powerless, and that God alone can effect so great a transformation. Prayer and penance I The farther I go, the more I see that these are the principal means of acting upon these poor souls."

"I can testify to the fertility of the Word among the small and the humble."

"We must continue evangelizing people’s beliefs with regard to angels, as the Church always did in the past. I think that our teaching about angels mustn’t occupy center stage but that it is important, since it reminds us of the spiritual dimension of existence. The simple fact to think of an angelic world, that is a purely spiritual world, would be a good way to fight the world’s underlying materialism and make people understand that there aren’t only material realities. The preaching about angels invites us to have a greater and more beautiful idea of God."

"Nobody can educated by himself. Education is the transmission of tradition through a witness. And the educator should be a master. Should be someone with enough to authority, not to impose but propose. But if you are not convinced you are unable to propose."

"The Catholic Church is not the religious function of a given political society. It is a communion of an order quite different from what national belonging or the framework of the law can provide, a communion open to all."

"I am​ a servant of God. God uses me. I don't know what will happen next but trust in God. I came to Cambodia not to convert people but to help Cambodian people understand the value of their own religion. The main aim is helping people to understand clearly what Buddha taught and what Jesus said in the gospels, helping them to live together and love one another. Our life is valuable even if we are poor. We can walk together. This is the good news we proclaim in Cambodia toda."

"It made me very, very, very, very happy, because I met all those I love and I thank the heavens for giving them to me. I thank God for the trouble they went to."

"We're facing the laïcité of the state in its most unfair expression, and I believe the Catholics will remember that."

"I like to interact with the pilgrims. I am their bishop, but above all I will be a pilgrim among them."

"The erosion of freedom of conscience also witnesses to a form of pessimism with regard to the capacity of the human conscience to recognize the good and the true, to the advantage of positive law alone, which tends to monopolize the determination of morality. It is also the Church’s role to remind people that every person, no matter what his beliefs, has, by means of his conscience, the natural capacity to distinguish good from evil and that he should act accordingly. Therein lies the source of his true freedom."

"Certainly, a dialogue with Islam may be pursued and must be pursued. Speaking about a dialogue with Islam is something abstract... we must rather pursue a dialogue with Islamic representatives, believers in Islam, and develop with them, as much as possible, common actions with them in favor of peace and development."

"As quoted in Andrea Gagliarducci, For Cardinal Mamberti, dialogue with Muslims is a must (May 13, 2015)"

"(About illegal immigrants) diplomacy must explore all the possible ways so that the human person is respected. Obviously, any initiative must be fostered under international law, and with the major goal to keep peace, as the Holy Father often reiterated: 'Only with peace, can we build the future'."

"(About the fall of the Berlin Wall) It was not just a reminder of the end of an era of profound division; it is a symbol of hope, showing that it is possible to overcome seemingly insurmountable obstacles for the benefit of what is deeply rooted in our human nature, namely life in dignity and freedom. And the fact that it was achieved in a marvelously peaceful manner makes us hopeful that it can be done again."

"(About security in Europe and around the world) It cannot be achieved without the protection of human rights," but, on the other hand, "full respect of human rights can be ensured only in a secure environment, allowing individuals to enjoy the inalienable rights and freedoms to which they are all entitled as human beings."

"I believe that the role of the Pope is to confirm his brothers in faith, and I believe that this is why he is coming: to say that Corsica is in his heart, and that the life of the Church in Corsica is important to him, just as the life of all churches around the world is important to him."

"We may talk, but dialogue is not about one truth versus another. Fraternity is not about understanding who is wrong and who is right, but about discovering together how each one of us, through our respective faiths, can become true brothers and sisters."

"Our Churches make themselves servants of the Kingdom which goes far beyond the frontiers of the visible Church because the frontiers of the Kingdom are none other than those of Charity. The Church is not an enterprise that seeks to expand, but it is a witness and servant of what God is doing in humanity. The witness is first of all one who recognizes in the other the work of the Spirit. He offers himself to collaborate in it."

"The Church in Algeria has a mission. We must be weavers of friendship, brotherhood and peace with everyone. We are called to disarm our hearts. We are a Church of encounter."

"I understand the full extent of the expression to surrender oneself, but I cannot explain it. I only know that it is very vast, that it embraces both the present and the future."

"The surrendered soul has found paradise on earth."

"A few days ago, I saw something that consoled me very much. It was during my thanksgiving, when I was making a few reflections on the goodness of God — and how would it be possible not to think of this in such moments: of this infinite goodness, uncreated goodness, source of all goodness! And without which there would be no goodness, neither in people nor in other creatures."

"Young Cambodians realize that they are apostles, and realize that evangelization is not the sole prerogative of priests and religious. It is the hope of Christ in us which we want to give to the world. The Gospel is not spread through proselytism, but by infecting people with one's enthusiasm."

"As Churches in the Pacific we are remote and somewhat isolated, but we know we are part of the universal Church and our that task is to be the presence of Christ in Oceania. We will keep in close contact with Rome to nourish our faith and our fidelity to the Holy Father and strive to be always authentic announcers of the Gospel."

"No one knows any longer whether the reintroduction of the bear in Pyrenees, kolkhozes, aerosols, the Green Revolution, the anti-smallpox vaccine, Star Wars, the Muslim religion, partridge hunting, the French Revolution, service industries, labour unions, cold fusion, Bolshevism, relativity, Slovak nationalism, commercial sailboats, and so on, are outmoded, up to date, futuristic, atemporal, nonexistent, or permanent."

"What has happened to those who, like Heidegger, have tried to find their ways in immediacy, in intuition, in nature, would be too sad to retell—and is well known anyway. What is certain is that those pathmarks off the beaten track led indeed nowhere."

"The only shibboleth the West has is science. It is the premise of modernity and it defines itself as a rationality capable of, indeed requiring separation from politics, religion and reality, society. Modernisation is to work towards this."

"Philosophy is not in the business of explaining anything. Actual occasions explain what happened, not philosophy. If there is one thing which philosophy should not do, it is to try to explain anything."

"There is no control and no all-powerful creator, either – no more 'God' than man – but there is care, scruple, cautiousness, attention, contemplation, hesitation and revival. To understand each other, all we have is what comes from our hands, but that does not mean our hands have to be taken for the origin."

"It should be noted here that a research area which has grown rapidly since the 1980s is the aforementioned STS field, that is, the sociological study of technology and science. Here, western science and technology are studied as cultural products, and many of its practitioners adhere to the so-called symmetry principle proposed by the French sociologist Bruno Latour, which entails that the same terminology and the same methods of analysis should be used for failures as for successes; in other words, that what we are doing is looking at science as a social fact, not as truth or falsity. Similarly, most anthropologists would argue that our task consists of making sense of ‘the others’, not judging whether they are right or wrong."

"In France, for several years, more and more catechumens — of all origins, all ages, all conditions, all religions or estranged from the faith –, ask for Baptism. I discovered in these persons' journey to what point Divine Mercy is at work. The great link occurred to me between the Divine Mercy and the whole journey of these men and women, at once profoundly desirous of knowing God, of experiencing His infinite Mercy, which gives strength."

"My main task now is to learn: this course has been most helpful and it will be useful for my duties in the diocese. Speaking with the other Bishops I learned that many face difficulties which are more serious than mine such as poverty, persecution. For me this seminar has been a call to take courage, not to fear the mission entrusted to me because I know I can rely on the Lord who is at my side. I was deeply moved by the meeting with the Pope. His physical weakness was an encouragement and an example for us. We saw the heroism of this man who spares no effort to fulfil the mission entrusted to him by Christ."

"When one is ordained it is not for oneself but for the service of a people. When one loves people, when one is loved by Christ, becoming a priest is a beautiful route to take."

"In these tragic events God is always on our side. He continues to visit us, to meet us, and then it's up to us to bring his peace throughout the world."

"To be Christian is to walk with Christ on His way, without dodging Golgotha in the impregnable confidence that the evils that can mark our lives and those of the world are known by Christ, taken in Him in the gift He makes of His life. And that thus they are held in the power of His Resurrection, which delivers us from fear and despair."

"The situation varies from country to country, some are more liberal than others. For us, it is difficult to find the balance between defending the rights of workers and using the tact needed with regard to the authorities, in order to maintain a Christian presence. However, there is great solidarity among Christians."

"Invisibly our Eucharistic celebrations gather a still absent people, one of those who are searching for God in the righteousness of their hearts. For a particular Church, the way of living the Eucharist cannot be separated from its concrete history with the people she was given to by the Lord."

"It is important to strongly reaffirm the will of the Catholic Church to make its own contribution, in the spirit of service, towards an effort common to all Europeans. Many do not share our faith. Others suspect a desire for power on the part of the Church. Others think that the Church is closed, as if it were locked up in the past, and has nothing more to give to today's world. However, many are those who are expecting from the Church and from Christians, a word, a commitment."

"Up to now I have tried to make my life a gift for him. What is most important is that my life belongs to the Lord. He has often led me to hear him, unexpectedly, and this time he has come to me and I could not say no to what the Lord was asking me."

"Our world is questioning our position and that is where we must be strong in belief, following the teaching of the church. Facing the difficult reality, the temptation will be, of course, to take the easy way."

"We will always be neighbours of Germany. We face the alternative of reaching an agreement with her or of clashing every twenty years on the battlefield."

"Just as war was originally waged between towns, then between countries and recently between empires, so, in future, it would be waged between continents. He did not believe in a Franco-German conflict...but sooner or later the Russians and the Chinese would launch an attack upon Europe. We had to make ourselves safe against this."

"War means the end of us all. Mankind is morally incapable of enduring another war, the horrors of which will surpass everything that has occurred hitherto. War would mean the end of Christian civilization."

"I consider agreement between Italy and France, that is to say between the Latin countries, including Nationalist Spain as well, as my life's mission."

"Mr Chamberlain is right to refuse to intervene in Spain, just as he is right to re-establish good relations with Italy. I hope that my country will not delay too long in following England's example."

"What is going on is abominable. A cry of indignation goes up at such a situation. Today, Germany, who lost the war, has more territory than she had before 1914... I demand that the government should find the solution. But there's one which is impossible and that is to let Germany go on with what she's doing."

"Because French-Italian cooperation had been destroyed Germany was in Vienna and in Prague. By turning their backs on his policy the French Governments had, since 1936, compromised the security of France and given to Germany the means, or at least part of the means, to capture the hegemony of Europe. In 1935, without a formal treaty, she had, in fact, become the ally of France. Although the Berlin-Rome Axis might be solid, and relations bad between Paris and Rome, M. Laval, nevertheless, could not finally acquiesce in a situation that was manifestly contrary to the interests of both countries."

"Well, it was unfortunate for us all that he [Ramsay MacDonald] refused to face the unpalatable fact of Abyssinia at Stresa, because Mussolini mistook his silence for agreement instead of imbecility; and his subsequent disillusion threw him into the arms of Germany, with the result that we lost Austria, and with it the whole of central Europe. Now, Mr. Boothby, I want to tell you that I think this war is a great mistake. If we had come to terms with Mussolini, as I wanted to do, we might have held Germany. That is no longer possible. We have given most of Europe to Hitler. Let us try to hold on to what we have got left. I am a peasant from the Auvergne. I want to keep my farm, and I want to keep France. Nothing else matters now... Make peace at once. Those people, have no idea of what they are up against."

"Gamelin is absolutely useless. The troops are all underground in that wretched Maginot Line, and completely demoralized. They should be in armour, but we haven't got any... Their [the French people] heart is not in this war... Quite soon the Germans are going to attack us. They will defeat us in three weeks, and we shall have to surrender. I would like to avoid that. We have already given them central and eastern Europe, and that we cannot undo. If we accept that, they might leave us alone, at least for a time; and ultimately turn east. Meanwhile, if we are to avoid immediate disaster, we have no alternative but to come to terms with them."

"Whether, in the last resort, Germany wins the war or not, we now have less choice than ever. We must reach an agreement with her... I don't believe in the permanence or even the long life of Nazism. In fifteen or twenty years' time – and that's nothing in history – Europe will have a new thirst for freedom. If the French flame has been kept alight, albeit dimly, it is to her that they will come to rekindle the extinguished torches...for there will be no one else."

"There are two alternatives, either you agree to what we ask and model yourselves on the German and Italian constitutions, or Hitler will force you to do so... France has never had and never will have a more inveterate enemy than Great Britain. Our whole history bears witness to that. We have been nothing but toys in the hands of England, who has exploited us to ensure her own safety. Today we are at the bottom of the abyss where she led us... I see only one way to restore France...to the position which she is entitled: namely, to ally ourselves resolutely with Germany and to confront England together."

"Since parliamentary democracy wished to enter into a struggle with Nazism and fascism and since it lost that struggle, it must disappear. A new régime – one that is bold, authoritarian, social and national – must take its place."

"I desire the victory of Germany, for without it, bolshevism would tomorrow install itself everywhere."

"I tried to organize peace in Europe and I thought that the first thing to do was to bring France and Italy together. I thought that this was the first link in a chain which would one day lead us to an agreement with Germany."

"We must organize our continent and Europe will be weak or it will be strong. For it to survive, it must be constructed according to certain principles... The organization of all the countries which comprise our continent must be such that neither the conquerors nor the conquered are ever again tempted to rise up against one another. On the material plane, the countries must help one another and harmonize their economic interests so that the needs of each can be satisfied without recourse to the competition and violence which have too often been the rule of the past. The new Europe will last if the germs of revenge are forever eradicated from it."

"I have always had simple ideas in politics. People take me for a shyster, but they don't know me. What I do is so simple that it looks to those who don't understand like something very complicated."

"It has been said that I lacked idealism, doubtless because I believed and still do believe that, while politics must not neglect the imponderables, it must be based upon realities, especially in the foreign field. Régimes follow one another and revolutions take place, but geography remains unchanged. We will be neighbours of Germany forever."

"You have tried to give and to keep. You wanted to have your cake and eat it. You cancelled your words by your deeds and your deeds by your words. You have debased everything by fixing, intrigue and slickness... Not sensitive enough to the importance of great moral issues, you have reduced everything to the level of your petty methods."

"M. Laval believed that world-wide peace hinged on keeping peace in Europe; that European peace hinged on cordial relations between France and Germany; and that France and Germany could work out their differences only if the British would refrain from interfering in European affairs in execution of their traditional balance-of-power policy... He envisioned a future where Europe would be more or less united, Russia would be thrust back into Asia, and the Anglo-Saxon world would lead an autonomous existence with the United States and France serving as the point of contact between the European and Anglo-Saxon world."

"He impressed me strongly as a man of directness and solidity of mind with whom it was possible to pursue a subject consecutively in a way which Englishmen understand."

"My impression of Laval has steadily risen during this series of conferences from the first time I met him in Paris. He has shown himself to be able, forceful man and I think also a sincere man... His speeches in the conference were always to the point, clear and forceful. In his talks with me he was extremely frank and towards the end of our acquaintance manifested the utmost friendliness."

"Laval stands in a class by himself for frankness and directness and simplicity and he is different from all other Frenchmen with whom I have negotiated in these respects."

"I thank You, O my God, that You have given me shelter beneath your roof. Abandonment, love, trust—such is my motto."

"After the Commune, thousands of workers were shot, while the leaders were allowed to escape; a King of France would have punished the leaders mercilessly, but he would have spared the people."

"What are Pavia or Rosbach...compared to Sedan or Waterloo? Revolutions have succeeded revolutions. The state is bankrupt. Three times foreign invaders have occupied Paris. We have had two civil wars. We have witnessed the making of Italian unity and German unity and the enormous expansion of the double Anglo-Saxon empire. Never has political France been so small. And since then she has accomplished her masterpiece of smallness. She has turned herself into a Republic, in other words she has deliberately chosen to be weak and defeated."

"The bourgeoisie does not understand the labour question."

"There can be no social peace in the Republic, and social reform is impossible without the king."

"Official orators have agreed amongst themselves to leave out one essential point: that to undertake the liberation of the fatherland, Joan had to go directly to the Dauphin Charles, acknowledge the right of his royal blood, and have him crowned and acclaimed on the cathedral square of Reims."

"Comte put to flight the pernicious and artificial doctrine according to which there is an opposition between the interests of the ruler and the ruled, for the latter derives his greatest benefit from being directed and guided... Renan finally made me aware of the service any élite, when it sincerely concerns itself with the highest considerations, renders and must render to the multitude, even unconsciously."

"This pre-existing capital brings men fortune and honour, equips and refines them from the moment they come into the world, without anything having been done about it by these happy animals... Whatever brings together this beneficent capital is therefore a good thing; whatever dissipates it is less good. Work is good, saving is good... It is in the closely knit and stable circle of the home that production, acquisition, conservation have the greatest chance of success, for the personal instinct is there moderated and regulated by immediate affection, and generosity balanced by healthy egoism. Thus strength, duration and hereditary are related and linked; so are also the constitution of great families, the accumulation of vast possessions, the possibility of education and culture."

"In London and Berlin, at the time when Berlin and London flourished, the government was dynastic; it was so in Paris when Paris flourished. Dynastic succession creates the coherence of all the strength of an empire. Etymology would tell one that, in the absence of history. Not only because dynasty does without the exhausting system of electoral and parliamentary competition, but because it is good and beautiful that the authority of the sovereign authority should not be a force fashioned by human hand, that it should come to us from the most ancient times, and that the centuries should have created it for us and transmitted it to us, named it and imposed it on us ready-made, helped as it were by its legitimacy, that right of the leaders which is based on the fact that they played the major part in the creation of the country."

"That France may live, the King must return."

"There are certain conservatives in France who fill us with disgust. Why? Because of their stupidity. What kind of stupidity? Hitlerism. These French "conservatives" crawl on their bellies before Hitler. These former nationalists cringe before him. A few zealots wallow in dirt, in their own dirt, with endless Heils. The wealthier they are, the more they own, the more important it is to make them understand that if Hitler invaded us he would skin them much more thoroughly than Blum, Thorez and Stalin combined. This "conservative" error is suicidal. We must appeal to our friends not to let themselves be befogged. We must tell them: Be on your guard! What is now at stake is not anti-democracy or anti-Semitism. France above all!"

"We are at the end of the Enlightenment. Have you read Charles Maurras?"

"These elements in French society were now to be given a lead by a man of genius whose power of argument, of sophistry, of tenacity, served to give an appearance of life to the dead monarchy and who provided a framework of political doctrine within which nearly all the critics of the Republic on the Right were to work and which was not without its influence on some critics of the Left."

"Maurras was no optimist; human life at best was hard; the wise man accepted this fact and adjusted himself to the world as it was and ever would be, a world in which the race was to the swift and the battle to the strong, in which mere sentimental pity was a weakness and an intellectual crime. Like Nietzsche, Maurras despised Christianity and thought its politically dangerous sentiments of "he hath put down the mighty from their seat and hath exalted the humble" order highly noxious. In his early writings he gave free expression to this hostility, but as a realist, a positivist, he had to admit that France had been profoundly marked by the teaching of the Church; and as a practical politician, he had to face the fact that many of his potential supporters were likely to be alienated by the frank expression of his distaste for Christianity. So whatever regrets he had for the old gods, he had to recognize that they were conquered, that the day of the "laurel, the palms and the paean" was over. He accepted the fact that the French tradition was Christian, but, fortunately, Christian with a Roman and Hellenic superstructure."

"Maurras, like Bannon, was a Catholic nationalist, and he argued in the early 1900s that the Enlightenment had elevated the individual over the nation. (One person who knows Bannon said he has spoken of the coming end of the Enlightenment.) To Maurras, a hero of the modern French right wing, the French Revolution ideals of "liberty, equality and fraternity" were a liberal cosmopolitan corruption of France's authentic identity. Bannon has approvingly cited Maurras' distinction between the "legal country," led by elected officials, and the "real country" of ordinary people, as a frame for the populist revolt underway. Maurras even warned about the nefarious influence of Islam in Europe."

"Maurras had converted to monarchism during a visit to the eastern Mediterranean in 1896 when he realized how little influence republican France had in comparison to the monarchical empires of Great Britain, Germany and Russia. The Dreyfus Affair convinced him that the Republic had fallen into the hands of the "four confederate states" of Jews, Protestants, freemasons and foreigners, and that only a restored monarchy could bring back a strong state, a united nation and national greatness."

"Maurras's nostalgia for his native province had inspired him to learn the Provençal language and eventually to join the Félibres, a tiny group of southern émigrés in Paris who sought to promote the Provençal renaissance inaugurated by the poet Frédéric Mistral. From this provincial, back-to-the-soil milieu emerged the guiding principles of Maurras's peculiar brand of royalism: political decentralization, restoration of the pre-revolutionary provincial boundaries, opposition to statism, official recognition of Provençal. Such doctrines hardly appealed to the cosmopolitan young Parisian who had recently observed the failure of Bavarian separatism and the enviable vitality of the unitary German Empire. In a subsequent letter Bainville declared himself in favor of centralization and accused Maurras of exaggerating the intelligence of France's rural population."

"The ultra-nationalist writer Charles Maurras believed there were “two Frances”. The one he loved was the "pays réel", the real country: a rural France of church clocks, traditions and native people fused with their ancestral soil. Maurras loathed the “pays légal”, the legal country: the secular republic, which he thought was run by functionaries conspiring for alien interests."

"Rather than be outraged, we need to understand. I fight all the antisemitic ideas of Maurras, but I find it absurd to say that Maurras must no longer exist."

"Not being able to read in the book of history, which shows that democracy degenerates everywhere into despotism, it undertook to establish democracy in France . . . thus it dared to fight in every way the two foundations of all societies, authority and inequality; inequality which is the obvious basis of all activity and fecundity in social life; which is at the same time the mother and the daughter of liberty, since equality cannot be imagined outside of tyranny. To be sure, I am not speaking about Christian equality, whose real name is equity; but about this democratic and social equality, which is nothing but the canonization of envy and the chimera of jealous ineptitude. This equality was never anything but a mask which could not become reality without the abolition of all merit and virtue . . . . . . No, property, the last religion of bastard societies, cannot resist alone the onslaught of the levellers. Have we not seen in our days that the privileges even of intellect have been challenged, and that appeals have been made to ignorance in order to save the revolution? It cannot be doubted that the dogma of equality, quite logically, should not respect merit or wealth more than birth."

"It is not a question of lowering the church's moral requirements. When Jesus said that the prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God ahead of us, he was not advocating prostitution. There are things that offend us, that shock us, that hurt us because they are ambiguous and wrong, but before judging and condemning, we must remember the "synthesis" offered by Thérèse."

"Igitur infra supradictum millesimum tercio iam fere imminente anno, contigit in uniuerso pene terrarum orbe, precipue tamen in Italia et in Galliis, innouari ecclesiarum basilicas, licet plereque decenter locate minime indiguissent, emulabatur tamen queque gens christicolarum aduersus alteram decentiore frui. Erat enim instar ac si mundus ipse excutiendo semet, reiecta uetustate, passim candidam ecclesiarum uestem indueret."

"30 people in my cathedral is ridiculous and absurd. It is 96 m long and 25 m wide (40m transept) by 30 m high. Total = 2500 m²: with 4 m² per person, we can fit 600 people! You have to learn to count!"

"We are looking to be more numerous, to gather more faithful for the Eucharist, to manifest more strongly the Catholic presence in our secularized societies. However, we cannot be satisfied by these quantitative perspectives. We are also called upon to a task of internal renewal of our Christian life."

"The Church, the Family of God in Congo Brazzaville, our mission today, is located clearly between the first evangelization, a parish pastoral of true closeness, and the new evangelization."

"A social body which lives essentially upon the gifts which it shouldn't collect itself - here, the priestly body - loses the sense of reality: money is no longer the fruit of work, it becomes an abstract value. When there is no more money, one believes that there still is more. To live like this upon gifts does not favor the maturity of comportments."

"The idea that Christianity has been achieved in Europe is widespread, sometimes leading to programmes separating the Church, Christianity and contemporary culture. The result is a sort of "unconcerned apostasy" of most Europeans, at least in Western Europe, and especially among adolescents and young people"

"The Islamic-Christian dialogue may appear overcome when Islamic movements in certain Muslim countries stir up armed groups and set up their followers against whoever does not share their ideas. The Church of Algeria is undergoing a trial of this kind. Fidelity to their vocation - in a difficult context - as priests, religious brothers, religious sisters and lay missionaries shows that this development of fundamentalist movements of Islam does not justify abandoning dialogue."

"For the poorest of the poor the Church is Mother, the Church is the bearer of a message of peace and love. We hope the new Pontiff will continue with interreligious dialogue, to have special relationship with young people and to fight against secularisation. In Algeria Catholics live in a difficult context but we offer our contribution towards building harmony among the peoples and the religions of the world."

"We are happy that God has given us a common mission here in Algeria. And this mission is all the more important at a time when the pressure of globalisation comes up against reaffirmation of the specific identity of different civilisations, nations and cultures. We are convinced that by means of the "sacrament of encounter" we are called to operate together with our Muslim friends in their diversity, welcoming those among them who wish to have a better understanding of who we are."

"We are also in the Arab world, which has its specific problems, and it seems important to us that the universal Church pause to take into account in a truly particular way the problems of Christians who are minorities in the Arab world, beginning with those in the Middle East."

"He was a brother to me. He opened and paved a way and we will continue down the same path."

"Il n’y a rien dans ce monde qui n’ait un moment decisif."

"Scripturus bella regum cum gentibus adversis, martyrum cum paganis, eclesiarum cum hereticis, prius fidem meam proferre cupio, ut qui ligirit me non dubitet esse catholicum. Illud etiam placuit propter eos, qui adpropinquantem finem mundi disperant, ut, collectam per chronicas vel historias anteriorum annorum summam, explanitur aperte, quanti ab exordio mundi sint anni. Sed prius veniam legentibus praecor, si aut in litteris aut in sillabis grammaticam artem excessero, de qua adplene non sum inbutus; illud tantum studens, ut quod in eclesia credi praedicatur sine aliquo fuco aut cordis hesitatione reteneam, quia scio, peccatis obnoxium per credulitatem puram obtenire posse veniam apud Deum."

"Nec dubium enim est, quod hic primus homo Adam, antequam peccaret, tipum Redemptoris domini praetulisset. Ipsi enim in passionis sopore obdormiens, de latere suo dum aquam cruoremque producit, virginem inmaculatamque eclesiam sibi exhibuit, redemptam sanguine, latice emundatam, non habentem maculam aut rugam, id est limphis ablutam propter maculam, extensam in crucem propter rugam."

"This Church was born a year after Vatican II which placed the accent on the universality of the People of God. She is inscribed in the Universial Mission of the Church; she is an integral part of the whole which she serves and benefits of its support. To her alone, she is the whole Church and, however, she can only survive through the other members which make fraternal love interdependent. Because of this, she counts especially upon the solidarity of the unique college of all the Bishops."

"C'est vous le negre? Très bien. Continuez, mon ami, continuez!"

"Fièvre typhoide? Mauvaise affaire, très mauvaise affaire! Un homme en meurt, ou il reste idiot pour le reste de sa vie. J'en sais quelque chose. J'ai eu la fièvre typhoide en Algérie."

"J'y suis, et j'y reste."

"Que d'eau! Que d'eau!"

"A dedicated presence in the world is necessary, based on a realistic, but also hopeful vision of the society, even of a secularized society. I find that, perhaps because of difficult circumstances, there is a latent pessimism among Christians nowadays, sometimes leading to apathy and resignation, sometimes on the contrary to an activism mixed with bitterness, the so called "bitter zeal" of the spiritual literature. Both should be avoided."

"The Christian, conscious of his mission, translates his faith into his life. Faith does not impoverish and does not shrink culture, but on the contrary is the radiating leaven. Like the rainbow radiates all its colours, the Church in Africa is resplendent with the beauty of the Gospel progressively inculturated in all of its cultures and already fruitful bearers of holiness for the entire Church and the whole world."

"The Church of Rome is not spotless, it is not hard and pure like a utopia, whose only real quality would be that of not existing. Instead it exists, with its features marked strongly by time and space, by men and their stone constructions. Thus, the vocation of Rome is the incarnation of the faith."

"(Que) la loi du devoir est une loi d’amour."

"Oh! comme les oiseaux doivent mourir l’hiver! Pourtant, lorsque viendra le temps des violettes, Nous ne trouverons pas leurs délicats squelettes Dans le gazon d’avril, où nous irons courir. Est-ce que les oiseaux se cachent pour mourir?"

"(Car) le poète a pour monnaie Des étoiles dans son gousset."

"(Et) l’unique bonheur auquel on peut prétendre En ce monde, est de croire et non pas de comprendre."

"Du luxe, des haillons, de la clarté, des cris Et de la fange. C’est le trottoir de Paris !"

"Le temps qui s’écoule fait bien ; Et mourir ne doit être rien, Puisque vivre est si peu de chose."

"Le vicomte, percé d’une longueur de lame, Tomba, fit un sursaut ou deux, et rendit l’âme. Alors, en rajustant au vainqueur son pourpoint, L’un des soldats lui dit: ::Vous le haïssiez? :::— Point. — Peut-on vous demander la cause de l’affaire? — La couleur des cheveux qu’il convient qu’on préfère. Il était pour les noirs, moi je suis pour les blonds. — Vous avez été vif, mon gentilhomme… Allons! Pour cheveux blonds ou noirs faut-il qu’on se courrouce? — C’est vrai, dit le bretteur, car ma maîtresse est rousse."

"Parfois, dans un coin triste et noir pousse une fleur."

"Il faut donner, donner, donner !"

"(Mais) la conscience, mon pauvre ami, c’est comme les gants de Suède : ça se porte sale."

"The Church was founded by Christ, the divisions among Christians were therefore a rejection of the Lord's will and a scandal for the world."

"Owing to the efforts of Bishop Durieu, the spiritual conditions of the Indians of the mainland of that province have ever been exceptionally bright."

"Gaps which appear in the Bible story, leave open a very large field for scientific speculation. Our high respect for the authority of the sacred books must prevent us from seeking in them what they were not intended to contain, what never entered the minds of those who wrote under the divine inspiration."

"For him, inspiration lies in the absolutely new spirit which animates the narrative, though in composition it is quite similar to the stories of neighbouring tribes. Four years after the death of the author this book was put on the Index. Quite probably Lenormant would have submitted, since in his introduction he asserts his attachment to the Catholic Faith and his devotion to the Church."

"At first the Mangamuka natives seemed inclined to expel "the Papists" and destroy their crucifixes and images. Ultimately, however, they were brought to kindlier dispositions, more probably as the result of Bishop Pompallier's reasonings."

"I am an old man, and do not need much. I can live in a basement or in a garret. But whether I come up from the basement or down from the garret, I shall still be your Bishop."

"The old bishop passed the last days of a life of apostolic zeal in retirement."

"He was of a sweet, modest, simple disposition, of lively faith and deep piety."

"The marking features of her personality were breadth of view and rapid intuition that appeared unerring as an instinct, directness of intention and strength of purpose which lay concealed under a timid exterior, but astonished by their force when circumstances called for prompt decision and action - and a characteristic grace of humility which seemed to be her distinguishing supernatural gift."

"His energy, sound judgment, and an eloquence which caused Pope Leo XIII to compare him to Bossuet, as well as his unbounded charity, endeared Archbishop Perché to the people of Louisiana."

"Archbishop Perche was a great scholar, but he lacked administrative ability."

"An impartial study of African religion makes it impossible for anyone, in the present state of acquaintance with the subject, to assert that man began on this great continent by having no religious ideas; that from such a state he passed to Naturism, to rise, by degrees, to Animism, Fetishism, and Theism."

"My head shall be cut off before allowing you to appoint priests to any parish."

"Briand was a strenuous worker, self-possessed, tactful, and devoted."

"He united firmness with the respect of civil authority."

"This is really the future of medicine, to repair the genetic code. So it is not crazy to think that one day we could treat them. The difficulty is that there is a lot of money to make the diagnosis and to kill them, and if we could put only 10% of that money into research, we would have already found the cure."

"The doctrine was thenceforth looked on as heterodox by the Church. It was destined, nevertheless, to be revived."

"He soon had to face serious dissensions over the claim by the laity to a voice in the appointment of clergy; he tactfully induced his flock to yield."

"Martin, born in Brittany, inherited the deep faith of the Bretons."

"The lives of the missionaries who are devoting themselves exclusively to the native population are lives of intense isolation, but their personal sufferings and inconveniences count for little when there are souls to be saved."

"During nearly twenty years of devoted work for the church he won the esteem of thousands of its best citizens."

"His administration was marked by piety, zeal, and providential prudence."

"With an eye to the future he endeavored to provide for the growth of his diocese by bringing Catholic immigrants from European countries to the fertile plains of Minnesota. Withal he did not neglect his ministerial and pastoral office."

"His gentleness and self-sacrifice wrought wonders."

"It used to be the custom in France to spend the whole of the summer in the country and the winter in town. By , or, at the latest, at the end of December, the chateaux were deserted, and the hotels of the filled with fashionable inhabitants. This is no longer the case. People remain in their country houses until nearly the end of winter, and though the Paris season encroaches a little on the spring, it is over by the beginning of June, and the time devoted to social enjoyment thus considerably abridged. Whether this change is for the best is a question not easily solved."

"The doctor rubbed his spectacles and opened his snuff-box with a great noise, as the young girl made the light repast, which soon brought the color to her cheek again, or, at least, the usual color, for her face was, ordinarily, very pale. Large eyes, grave and gentle, gray rather than blue, shadowed by lashes as black as her hair, made her face singular and striking. Yet, in spite of this singularity, in spite of her paleness, the delicacy of her features, and her slender figure with its willowy grace, if one wished to describe in two words the general impression produced by the aspect of Fleurange d'Yves, one would have chosen these: simplicity and strength."

"Le Récit d’une sœur, qui est pour la plus grande partie la correspondance authentique et intime d’une famille bien connue, fit grand bruit. Peu de livres de femme se sont vendus à un aussi grand nombre d’exemplaires. « Ce livre est un calice de douleurs ! » Elle a été très critiquée par Armand de Pontmartin et Barbey d’Aurevilly. Ce dernier aurait voulu que le Récit d’une sœur fût l’unique livre de Mme Craven. « La plume qui l’a écrit devrait être brisée, a-t-il dit, comme, dans certains pays, le verre avec lequel on a trinqué avec le roi. Le verre funèbre plein de délices et d’angoisses dans lequel Mme Craven a bu à la mémoire des siens ne devait plus servir à personne. Est-ce que le roi de Thulé, après avoir pleuré dans sa coupe, ne la jeta pas à la mer ? » The Tale of a Sister, which is for the most part the authentic and intimate correspondence of a well-known family, caused a great stir. Few women's books have sold such a large number of copies. "This book is a chalice of sorrows!" It was criticized in depth by and . The latter would have liked the Tale of a Sister to be Mrs. Craven's only book. "The pen that wrote it should be broken," he said, "like, in some countries, the glass with which one toasts with the king. The funeral glass full of delights and anguish from which Mrs. Craven drank in memory of her family should no longer be of use to anyone. Did not the , after weeping in his cup, throw it into the sea?""

"... one feels compelled to admit the justice of Paul Bourget's classification when he places Mrs. Craven in the pious school of novelists. ... From the material point of view her efforts were happily very successful, some of her stories having had an extensive sale. Yet it would be a daring speculation to assert either that she created her reading public or robbed the realistic writers of theirs. Most probably she wrote for a public which already existed—the pious Catholic world in France—and in so doing has laid herself open to the stigma of having "written books for girls." The best which can be said of Mrs. Craven's novels is, that they are conventional romances written by a clever woman."

"An indefatigable missionary, who had served long and unselfishly for the Church in Texas."

"Noteworthy progress has also been achieved in their dress, housing, preparation of food, treatment of wives, and, generally, in their ideas of social relations; so much so that the Blood Indian of to-day may be considered an entirely different being from his predecessor of twenty-five years ago."

"Like his predecessor, he spent the whole of his priestly life in arduous missionary work in southern Texas, often helping to build churches with his own hands. He was consecrated 28 October, 1895, and d. 11 March, 1911, deeply loved and regretted by all classes."

"Of works of charity she never wearied."

"In carrying my remembrances back to those sad days, of which I am writing, I recognize that I never have thanked God, as I ought to have done, for those particular graces, by which he preserved me in the midst of so great madness and impiety. Those who were at the head of the irreligious frenzy which then devastated our France, presided forward with all the confidence of success. Every device of cruelty and malice was put in operation, to attain the end they had in view: to destroy the Catholic Religion, not only in France, but throughout the world. So far, as I am witness, did their detestable hopes of the complete final triumph over the Christian Faith extend. And yet, at that very moment, how strong and imperishable was its hold upon thousands of hearts; how fervently did every true Christian family pledge its love and life to our blessed Lord."

"His great influence on the entire church, his wonderful success in planning, financing, and carrying out necessary ecclesiastical reforms, and the constructive and executive ability he displayed in his diocese, make him one of the foremost Catholic emigrants to the United States."

"In spite of the avowed infidelity then prevalent in the schools, he remained proof against sophistry and ridicule."

"Some historians have pretended that pagan philosophy entirely dominated Justin's Christianity, or at least weakened it. To appreciate fairly this influence it is necessary to remember that in his "Apology" Justin is seeking above all the points of contact between Hellenism and Christianity."

"For some people recognizing sexual difference in marriage and family where equality is necessary and foundational would be a deception that would shake one of the foundations of our society and establish discrimination especially among children."

"Marriage is love and affection between two parties but it is not just a generous openness to marriage in front of new categories of citizens but rather a transformation in marriage that will affect everyone It will not be a marriage for everyone but rather a marriage of a few people imposed on everyone but some people apply this opinion and some do not."

"They dress themselves in masks and place them in the trappings of religion to hide their murderous project and those who want to announce to us the god of death Moloch who rejoices in the death of man and promises paradise to those who kill with his help cannot hope to Humanity surrenders to their illusion The hope that God has inscribed in the human heart has a name which is life Hope has a face the face of Christ who gave his life in sacrifice so that people could have life in abundance Hope has a project a project to unite humanity into one people not through extermination but through condemnation and the call for freedom and love among people."

"Anxiety is the threat of terror the blind attacks Where will we find the strength to face dangers if we do not rely on hope We who believe in the God of Jesus Christ our hope is trusting in the word of God as received and transmitted by the Prophet: They will fight against you but they will not prevail against you for I am with you to save you and to deliver you I will rescue you from the hand of the wicked and I will deliver you from the grip of the powerful My fortress is God the God of my love Cardinal s homily at the Mass for the souls of the victims of Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray."

"Conversions from paganism progress slowly, but continuously. The native Catholics, now numbering rather more than one thousand, are well instructed and faithful to their religious duties."

"There is a middle position, represented by the judgment of serious, right-minded men, which commends itself to the commonsense public. I need not say that I believe that position to be mine; I may deceive myself. But the folly of some of the theories is as repugnant to me as the foolishness of some of the legends. I think even that if I had to choose I should prefer the legends, for in them at least there is always some poetry and something of the soul of a people."

"The religion of the Malagasies appears to be fundamentally a kind of mixed Monotheism, under the form of a Fetishism which finds expression in numerous superstitious practices of which these people are very tenacious."

"Having been inured for many years to the labors of a missionary life, we feel ready, in spite of our advanced age, to share with you all the hardships' of the ministry. We are ambitious of no distinction. We expect to find in each of you a friend."

"His episcopal career, which promised to be one of great usefulness to the Church, was cut short by his untimely death."

"Cardinal Aveline: Identity, the core and physiognomy of what constitutes us, what we are, can only be built within a living relationship with otherness, with the other; a closed, impermeable identity is sterile. Interviewer: Is that why you are so committed to interreligious dialogue? Cardinal Aveline: No, the opposite happened. On this front, which was assigned to me by surprise by my bishop at the time, Mgr. Robert Coffy, I was able to verify the truth I had experienced in my life: through dialogue, familiarity, openness and sharing, we are able to make our identity flourish and encounter others more closely, and also to be missionaries, which does not mean proselytising. We need to de-centre ourselves in order to live the mission."

"Interviewer: You are very involved in dialogue with Islam and Judaism. Is it possible to combine mission and interreligious dialogue? Cardinal Aveline: The Church's mission begins with the creation of this climate of dialogue. Again in Ecclesiam suam, Paul VI states that "the climate of dialogue is friendship. Indeed, service." This is what Charles de Foucauld, Pierre Claverie and many others understood: the need for a climate that unites us around the same fundamental existential questions. It is then that the Gospel can be proclaimed, but not as a mere slogan that does not take into account the existential questions of the other. If we consider mission without taking into account the concrete existence of the other, the concrete questions they ask themselves, we risk turning it into a mere word, but not a reality."

"No human power can now stop the march of a nation destined to exert its influence all over the world and perhaps to dominate it."

"I have a Vicariate as large as all France, and three churches and two priests."

"It was but natural that in view of the extraordinary discoveries made in recent years in physics, mechanics and chemistry, the minds of men should be fascinated by new and unheard-of physical, mechanical and chemical phenomena, admitting of scientific examination, and holding out such rich and transcendent promises. Now, by imitating and even surpassing the effects of natural agents, pure spiritual substances can thus easily conceal their operation and gain access to man. They can even, on the pretence of furthering scientific progress, induce man to indulge in these unlawful practices, and thus attack him unawares. This is so much easier in an age when the study of the human soul and its faculties, and of the angelic nature and the spiritual world in general, is so greatly and universally neglected."

"Atheism is not only complicated and rare, it is also a recent phenomenon, a peculiarity supported by few and only recently in certain Western intellectual circles."

"(Referring to Marthe Robin) was simple.... What prevailed in Marthe was her capacity for sacrifice, in imitation of Christ.... With simple words, she aroused in us one of those rare, sudden, sweet, somewhat melancholic and yet radiant emotions that make you aware of your destiny."

"Paul VI's intention regarding the liturgy, regarding the vulgarisation of the Mass, was to reform the Catholic liturgy so that it would coincide more or less with the Protestant liturgy... with the Protestant Supper. And further on: "... I repeat that Paul VI did everything in his power to bring the Catholic Mass – beyond the Council of Trent – closer to the Protestant Supper. He was particularly helped by Monsignor Bugnini, who did not always enjoy his confidence on this point. [...] Of course, I did not attend the Calvinist Supper, but I did attend Paul VI's Mass. And Paul VI's Mass presents itself first and foremost as a banquet, does it not? It insists very much on the aspect of participation in a banquet, and much less on the notion of sacrifice, of ritual sacrifice, in the face of God, while the priest shows only his back. So I do not think I am mistaken in saying that the intention of Paul VI and of the new liturgy that bears his name is to ask the faithful for greater participation in the Mass, to give a greater place to Sacred Scripture and a lesser place to everything else in it, some say “magical”, others “consubstantial consecration”, [correcting himself] transubstantiation, which is the Catholic faith. In other words, Paul VI had the ecumenical intention of removing – or at least correcting, attenuating – what was too “Catholic”, in the traditional sense, in the Mass, and of bringing the Catholic Mass – I repeat – closer to the Calvinist Mass."

"Joan of Arc possesses more genius than talent, more heroism than courage, more intuition than intelligence, more immediacy than endurance and, if we may say so, more glory than grace. That is why she seems more angelic than human, a traveller from another world, parachuted into this one. (p. 7)"

"Joan is not a theologian; in fact, she cannot tell A from B. However, listening to her answers during her trial, we sense in her a theological intelligence, a ready ability to resolve cases brought before her conscience, which, if developed, would have made her equal to the greatest minds. (p. 9)"

"In Giovanna, purity was more than a virtue. It was her mark, her reason for existing and her implicit glory, her resemblance to the mother of Christ. Being a country girl, accustomed to seeing life in all its gestures, she probably had very accurate knowledge of purity in the physical sense. In the countryside, ignorance is never what the 19th-century bourgeoisie falsely calls innocence. And when, at the age of thirteen, Joan gave her virginity to God during the angel's first visit, she knew clearly what it meant. (p. 30)"

"Joan puts God's will above her virginity. She says that she “has offered her virginity as a vow for as long as God pleases”. This concern for the hierarchy of values, this idea of “God first”, is always evident in her. Joan is a virgin because God inspired her to be so; she is not a virgin of her own free will or choice. (pp. 34-35)"

"Unlike Calvino, you bring the soul into the designs of merciful predestination without any element of anguish."

"After about forty centuries of oral civilisation, the Word is an inflated currency."

"Ordinary people have more confidence in those who have suddenly arrived at that state and are naturally honest than in those who have had to make a painful and painful effort to get there."

"I have always made it a rule to speak in a timeless manner, true today, tomorrow and always."

"Generals do not fight with the fear of the troops, they prefer to keep them busy."

"The real way to resist temptation is to turn away and walk away."

"What is the charm of a person? It is difficult to say, because charm is indefinable. It is a certain presence of the person beyond their limits, like the radiance of certain pure faces."

"Love always envelops us: it is we, with our attitude towards it, who transform it into fire or light."

"Beauty is a splendour that must detach itself from those who possess it without them noticing and without returning to them."

"Beauty is a kind of supplement to being, a radiance that is added to being."

"The most enviable situation is not to be the subject of beauty and to know oneself to be beautiful, but to be the object of beauty and such that only the other enjoys what emanates from us."

"In the spiritual life, to grow means to simplify and simplify oneself, to become closer to uncreated and ineffable simplicity."

"For Teresa, the way of Mary is a way of faith, without ecstasy, without miracles, even without words."

"Teresa of Lisieux will give new splendour to the word. What she says, she does. And her words are oracles. I said “words”; I distinguish them from “phrases”. Teresa's phrases, in truth, are imperfect. Imperfect because of the weakness of men, who have given her a very mediocre language."

"Jewish thought was oriented towards the future. In the history of the past, it sought the image of what did not yet exist."

"It is not enough for the past to be past. It must also be truly overcome – it must have lost all causal connection with the present – so that only the spiritual connection remains, which is the connection between image and reality, between figure and fulfilment."

"Every segment of time shines, even if it is finite. It takes death, conversion, or interruption for us to understand any fragment of our lives."

"Discovering herself as the end of history, the Madonna now had the light to interpret the time that had gone before."

"Believing in God means believing in an incomprehensible being whose ability to listen is known. That is what kneeling means."

"I believe in God because of encounters. All explanations are useless; I believe in encounters."

"The Pope is unique. A man who, because of his position, is obliged to remain attached to “the ceiling”, to see things “from the ceiling's point of view”."

"The atheist confirms faith. And like a guinea pig that confirms my thesis or my faith in God."

"Paul VI told me that the prayer he recited every morning was: “My God, call me back to You, call me back to You, I can't take it anymore”. I believe that all popes recite this prayer, even John Paul II."

"For a Christian, what we call life is a preparation for what we call the “afterlife”, the other life."

"If the Church has sometimes been against science, the cause lies in its misreading of the Bible."

"I find that at twent it is easy to be a hero, a saint, an extraordinary man. I believe, however, that at ninety it is very difficult to live up to the moment."

"Before the Council, Mass was Mass. Obviously, in Latin, we didn't understand anything, but we had the impression (impression???) that it was Mass. Now, however, we have the feeling that it is the translation of a Protestant service. From my point of view, the liturgical reform as desired by the Council (Vatican II) was good; certainly it did not want the Mass, the Eucharist, to be sacrificed, nor above all reduced to what Protestants do during their ceremony, which we call supper. For example, when it was decided that the priest should not say Mass facing the altar, with his back to the faithful, but facing them, a decisive reform was carried out that truly disturbed many Christians. With good reason (With good reason???) — so that the faithful could understand — it was decided to celebrate the liturgy in the common language, but without any desire to abolish the sacred. Today, in practice, the Eucharist no longer has the sacred, serious and divine character it had in the past. (p. 103)"

"So today Mass risks resembling a liturgy of the word? A:"

"The Church is Jesus Christ communicated. This communication has two organically linked aspects, whose phenomenology is divinely revealed. On the one hand, the MISSIO: ‘Go, teach, baptise, educate...’ (Matthew XXVIII, 18-20). This is what we find in the Church militant, ‘until the end of the age’: catechesis, the sacraments, and the government (of souls). On the other hand, there is the SESSIO: ‘You who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging...’ (Matthew 19:28). Thus, even in the Church militant, the hierarchy that manifests and realises catholicity is established. The distinction and unity between Missio and Sessio are so inherent in the Church that they are recognised by Canon Law, both universally and in particular."

"Of divine institution, the sacred hierarchy comprises, with regard to order [ratione ordinis]: bishops, priests, ministers; with regard to jurisdiction [ratione juridisdictionis]: the supreme pontificate and the subordinate episcopate..." (canon 108.3). Thus, the sacred hierarchy, one and unique, nevertheless comprises TWO rationes: the ratio ordinis pertains to the Missio, the ratio jurisdictionis to the Sessio."

"What are the legends of the Celtiberian money? Are they the names of places, of chiefs, or of divinities? This question cannot be decided a priori and we are liable, like the ape in the fable, to take the Piraeus for a man's name. Are they a series of initials, or of abbreviated words? All these surmises suggest themselves before we engage in deciphering a legend in an unknown alphabet and language."

"His lectures bore the impress of his deep Catholic belief."

"Exercise is as essential to the health of the soul as it is to that of the body. A condition of habitual quiescence and stagnation were fatal to the health of both."

"I have trusted very much and been sometimes deceived; but I know that had I trusted less I would have been still oftener deceived."

"He was to me, for more than a quarter of a century, a most affectionate, devoted, and faithful friend, and a wise and able counsellor."

"Catholic scholars justly regard Biblical introduction as a theological science. They are indeed fully aware of the possibility of viewing it in a different light, of identifying it with a literary history of the various books which make up the Bible. They distinctly know that this is actually done by many writers outside of the Church, who are satisfied with applying to the Holy Scriptures the general principles of historical criticism."

"Variations are naturally to be expected in four distinct, and in many ways independent, accounts of Christ's words and deeds, so that their presence, instead of going against, rather makes for the substantial value of the Evangelical narratives."

"We have to give account only to God. The contribution of the Catholic Church in Ghana cannot be reduced in numbers, because we deal with persons, persons with wonderful dignity regardless of their origins, tribes and religion. A human person is the noblest being on earth. We believe that he is coming and going to God, for that reason we want to serve God through him in the best way."

"Hic breve vivitur, hic breve plangitur, hic breve fletur: Non breve vivere, non breve plangere retribuetur."

"Urbs Syon aurea, patria lactea, cive decora Omne cor obruis, omnibus obstruis et cor et ora Nescio, nescio, quae jubilatio, lux tibi quali Quam sociala gaudia, gloria quam specialis."

"It would seem that the victories of the Egyptian monarchs were far from decisive, and that Ethiopia always retained enough liberty to openly aspire to independence."

"Interviewer: You often say that more than a question of liturgy, today it is a question of faith that opposes us to the current Rome. Mgr. Lefebvre: Of course, the question of liturgy and the sacraments is very important, but it is not the most important. The most important question is that of faith. For us, it is settled. We have the faith of always, that of the Council of Trent, of the Catechism of Saint Pius X, of all the Councils and of all the Popes before Vatican II."

"This is what Tradition means to them, the famous living tradition, the only reason for our condemnation. Today they no longer try to prove that what they say is in accordance with what Pius IX wrote, with what the Council of Trent promulgated. All this is over, outdated, as Cardinal Ratzinger says."

"Now there is the tyranny of authority, because there are no more rules. One can no longer refer to the past. [...] We are dealing with people who have a different philosophy from ours, a different way of seeing things, influenced by all the modern and subjectivist philosophers. For them, there is no fixed truth, there are no dogmas. Everything is evolution. This is a completely Masonic conception. It is truly the destruction of the faith."

"[A practical agreement with the Holy See would give] ample space to the apostolate, perhaps, but in ambiguity, following two opposing directions at the same time, which would have ended up causing us to rot. (1988, before the Ecône episcopal consecrations)"

"The majority does not make the truth; it is the truth that must make the majority."

"We accept what is in accordance with perennial teaching, we receive what is ambiguous in accordance with perennial teaching, and we reject what is contrary to it."

"On Pinochet's dictatorship, 13 April 1987: ‘As soon as a man stands up to save his country from communism and restores Christian order, everything is done to discredit him. There is no country where people can move around as freely as in Chile.’"

"Voting socialist is voting against God. The socialist programme, he said, is terrifying for the souls of children. Economically, it will probably be a disaster, but what is worse is the control it will have over people's minds. Money is nothing compared to souls, and sin will spread everywhere. [...]"

"They placed a new missal in my hands, saying, “Here is the Mass you must celebrate and will now celebrate in all your houses.” They also told me that if, on this date, today, June 29, before our assembly, we had celebrated a Mass according to the new rite, everything between us and Rome would now be settled."

"Opposing the highest authorities in the Church and being suspended “a divinis” is a serious and very painful matter for a bishop. How is it possible to endure such a thing, unless for extremely serious reasons? And yes! The reasons for our behaviour and your behaviour are serious reasons: it is the defence of our faith! I have done work very similar to what I have been doing for thirty years. And now, suddenly, I am suspended “a divinis”, perhaps soon to be excommunicated, separated from the Church, renounced, who knows? Is this possible? Could it be that what I have been doing for thirty years was also grounds for suspension “a divinis”?"

"Questo catechismo olandese da dove viene? Ma non è un catechismo cattolico, viene dai Cardinali, viene dai Vescovi. e anche il catechismo francese e quello italiano -io l'ho visto questo catechismo italiano- vi sono degli errori, non è più la vera dottrina cattolica come l'avevano insegnata prima. Ma allora questo è una gravissima situazione; allora in tutto il mondo -io posso dirlo perché ho viaggiato in tutto il mondo e ho visto dei gruppi come i vostri che dicono...- ma che cosa passa nella Chiesa, noi non sappiamo più com'è la Chiesa Cattolica. Oggi queste cerimonie, questo culto mezzo protestante e mezzo cattolico, è un teatro, come un teatro, non è più un mistero, questo mistero del sacrificio della Messa, grande mistero, sublime mistero celeste. Non si sente più questa soprannaturalità della Messa. Allora è come vuoto, come una cerimonia vuota: si esce dalla chiesa, non si sa se abbiamo assistito a una cerimonia cattolica o a una cerimonia profana. Ma questo è possibile. Allora la gente buona e semplice dice: "no c'è qualche cosa che non è buona [in] questa riforma". E vedono i seminari vuoti, i noviziati delle suore vuoti.[...] Allora dobbiamo resistere per il bene della Chiesa, non per essere contro quelli che hanno l'autorità nella Chiesa, mai, mai. Io ho molto rispetto per il Santo Padre, per i vescovi, per il cardinale, mai io mi sento [in] cuore di dire una parola indegna, anche il vostro Cardinale, no. Ma io affermo la dottrina cattolica e io dico [che] io voglio rimanere cattolico come sono stato cattolico quando sono stato battezzato."

"I spent fifteen years in Dakar with three million Muslims, one hundred thousand Catholics and four hundred thousand animists, and if during those fifteen years we were able to convert ten Muslims, that was the maximum. I mean truly convert them, make them switch from Islam to Catholicism. I'm not saying that there wasn't some Catholic influence thanks to our schools, where we had up to 10-15% Muslims. I didn't want any more than that, otherwise they would have imposed Islam in our schools. Once they are strong, they impose themselves, take the lead and try to convert others. When they are weak, they listen and keep quiet. The young people who went to our schools were certainly influenced, and it is very possible that some of them wanted to be baptised. But it is very difficult for a young man to convert to Catholicism because he is driven out of his family and knows that he even risks being poisoned. [...] Only university students manage to convert because they are independent. They know that their future is secure; they no longer need their families and will leave for Europe, where they can convert. But converting someone who is part of their family is practically impossible. By inspiring the Islamic religion, the devil has truly prevented the conversion of millions of people."

"And if Muslims were granted all freedoms, polygamy would have to be allowed in the States. Islam is not just about Muslims kneeling in the streets at prayer time; it is also about the threat of submission, i.e. of becoming ‘Dhimmi’ for all those who are not like them. Can we accept this in Catholic states? Can we accept that these states do not defend themselves?"

"A Muslim proverb says: ‘Kiss the hand you cannot cut off.’ Yes, only force can intervene. When force is present, then they kiss the hand. But when they have the force, then they cut off the hand. It has always been this way."

"Yes, we forget this, but that is what Islam is all about. For Muslims, there is only Islam and everyone must submit to it, either by becoming a Muslim or by being a slave to Islam. One or the other. That is how they proceeded, enslaving all those who did not want to submit. Let us remember the religious orders: the Trinitarians and the Order of Our Lady of Mercy, which were founded to rescue Christians held captive as slaves by Muslims. They raided the coasts of France, Spain and the entire Mediterranean, kidnapping Christians and taking them home as slaves. This is still in their minds."

"If you ask a bishop in France whether we should try to convert Muslims, whether they are in France or elsewhere, or convert animists, Buddhists... Oh no! We must not convert them. On the contrary, we must strengthen them in their religion, make them understand the beauty of their religion. It is unbelievable, but it is nevertheless the reality."

"Father Maurice Avril, who is in Salérans, was persecuted by the bishops and had all kinds of trouble because after the Algerian War, he took care of the Harkis who were lucky enough to escape and take refuge in France. The Harkis had fought to defend French Algeria and wrest it from revolutionary control."

"Tens of thousands of them were massacred when De Gaulle handed Algeria over to the representatives of the FLN. The latter, of course, could not stand the Harkis who had fought alongside French troops to liberate French Algeria from terrorism and revolutionary rule. Those who were unable to flee to France on boats were tortured, massacred, buried alive and burned alive. What an abominable crime those who took such responsibility will have on their conscience! These were people who had devoted themselves, ready to die to defend French Algeria, just as some of them had come to fight in France in 1939-40, then during the Liberation when they landed in Italy, Corsica and Provence, and later against communism in Indochina. They were abandoned to the mercy of a cruel enemy who subjected them to the most abominable torments. It was a terrible tragedy. Many of their children remained in France; only the adults were sent back. Father Avril, who was a priest in French Algeria, took in more than a hundred of them. He educated them, raised them and took good care of them. The children of these Harkis found themselves in the hands of a priest who took care of their education and who, very gently, tried to convert them—without forcing them, of course—but through persuasion. Seeing the dedication of this priest and those who helped him, they eventually came to understand the beauty of the Catholic religion, and most of them ended up converting. This did not sit well with several bishops, who sent letters of disapproval to Father Avril: leave the Muslims alone; do not convert them! But who are these bishops?"

"I was a member of the preparatory commissions appointed by Pope John XXIII, and together with the other members—distinguished cardinals and good theologians—we prepared the preliminary outlines that were to serve as a basis for the scholars of the assembly. The preparation of these outlines, which were to be approved and promulgated as authoritative documents of the Church's teaching, required time, reflection, and consultation of ecclesiastical sources and documents. All this had to be taken into account. But then, in the first session of the Council, a group of bishops and cardinals, using modern techniques of pressure, managed to remove the exhaustive work that had been done. Thus, being subject to time constraints and internal regulations, new discussion outlines had to be prepared in other commissions set up in a completely arbitrary manner. Imagine the difficulties this entailed and bear in mind the decisive activity of certain cardinals and bishops, those who were called “coming from the banks of the Rhine,” gathered in the Idoc group, all imbued with modernism and liberalism and who, in addition, could count on a well-financed superstructure of offices, press, distribution, etc."

"Interviewer: By saying this, aren't we running the risk of undermining the Holy Spirit's assistance to the Council? Mgr. Lefebvre: I said that Vatican II was a purely pastoral council, and for this very reason it is clear that the two popes who presided over its sessions did not intend to commit the dogmatic Magisterium of the Holy Church to the even. It is therefore in this perspective that the inspiration of the Holy Spirit in the documents produced by the Council must be considered. The liberal orientation of the Council cannot be attributed to the Holy Spirit; it would be blasphemous, sacrilegious."

"I see only one type of ecumenism: that promoted by the Council, which emphasizes respect and collaboration with false religions, placed on the same level. This is a new concept that has been imposed and is in contradiction with Tradition. In place of the “missionary” Church, the new “ecumenical” Church has appeared. The Assisi meeting consecrates this new Church, and this is enormous, scandalous. [...] If salvation is possible even without conversion to Christ in the Church, and while continuing to worship one's false gods, what meaning does mission still have? Then all religions are equal, good... If this Pope had lived at the time of the Roman persecutions of the early centuries, perhaps Christianity would have found a respectable place in the Pantheon of religions."

"I celebrated Mass according to the new liturgical directives of 1965, but never according to the definitive ones of 1968, which bear the signature of Monsignor Bugnini. [...] The Faith is the teaching of the Church throughout the centuries, in accordance with the teaching of the Apostles. [...] I give you another definition, that contained in the anti-modernist oath of St. Pius X: the submission of the intellect and will to the Revelation of God, because God is the supreme authority and cannot err. Interviwer: And do you really think that Paul VI and John Paul II substantially changed this fundamental core of the Faith? Mgr. Lefebvre: I think they give another definition of the Faith. For them, Faith is a religious sentiment, an interior, subjective act. [...] The conscience is made to obey Revelation, not for itself. The problem is that for the last popes—speaking in Christian terms— the “subject” comes before the “object.” Whereas for the Tradition of the Church, the exact opposite is true: the object precedes the subject."

"There are some conciliar texts that are clearly in conformity with Tradition and pose no problem: I am thinking of Lumen Gentium, but also of other documents such as those on priestly formation and seminaries. Then there are ambiguous texts, which nevertheless can be correctly “interpreted” in a certain way according to the previous Magisterium. But there are also texts that are frankly in contradiction with Tradition and cannot be “integrated” in any way: the Declaration on Religious Freedom, the Decree on Ecumenism, and the one on the Liturgy. Here agreement becomes impossible. [...] It is the Declaration on Religious Freedom that is the real bone of contention, because the introduction of this liberal principle into the Church has led to other errors. The break with Tradition in this case is evident: eleven Popes, from Pius VI to Pius XII, condemned liberalism, and the Council approved it. No one can convince me that there is no contradiction."

"The Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith [Cardinal Ratzinger] asked me to put my opinions and doubts on this subject in writing. I did so, and in November 1985 I sent him a 150-page typewritten study. In January 1986, he replied that he had received these documents and appreciated their philological care."

"Interviewer: You have a certain tendency to see ‘conspiracies’ everywhere. Five days before being suspended a divinis, in a letter to Paul VI, you denounced ‘a secret agreement between high-ranking ecclesiastical dignitaries and Freemasons, established before the Council. Mgr. Lefebvre: But all the American newspapers wrote that, before the Council, Cardinal Bea, founder of the Vatican Secretariat for Ecumenism, had met with the leaders of the most influential Jewish-Masonic lodge at the Astoria Hotel in New York and asked them what they expected from the Council. And they replied: ‘A declaration on religious freedom’."

"(About Pinochet) I am not saying that his regime is perfect, but at least we find Christian principles as the fundamental program of his political orientation. He is a man of justice and order and favors the presence of the Catholic Church, even if the Chilean bishops—what a paradox!—are not at all grateful to him. [...] When Pinochet recently escaped an assassination attempt, [...] people shouted, “Thank you, Holy Virgin, for protecting the general's life."

"Who can say what events the future holds for us? Perhaps a world conflict will break out and the situation will change radically. [...] Those who provoke the schism are those who change the Faith. I am certain that I belong to the Catholic Church of all times, the eternal Church."

"The meeting in Assisi is a very serious matter. And if the Pope, whose function is to confirm the Faith, no longer fulfills his duty, what is to be done? The situation has reached the highest degree of gravity. I see no similar precedents in the history of the Church."

"What value can an excommunication decided by the current liberal government of the Church have? For more than a century, conservative popes have condemned and excommunicated the Lamennais, the Buonaiuti, the Loisy, because they were liberals and modernists. Today, it is they who hold power in the Church, and they want to excommunicate traditionalists, that is, true Catholics."

"Then one can and must believe that the Church is occupied, occupied by this counter-Church that we know well, that the Popes knew perfectly well and that the Popes have condemned over the centuries, from now back to four centuries ago. The Church has never ceased to condemn this counter-Church that was born and developed with Protestantism, and which is at the root of all modern errors, which has destroyed all philosophy, which has led us to all the errors we know and which the popes have condemned: liberalism, socialism, communism, modernism, Zionism... we are dying from it! We are dying from it! The Popes have done everything to condemn this, and now those who sit on the seats of their predecessors who condemned these things are in agreement with this liberalism, with this ecumenism. (at minutes 4:00-4:40)"

"This cannot be accepted! And the more things become clear, the more we must realize that this program was developed in Masonic lodges, that all these errors were developed in Masonic lodges. It is becoming increasingly clear that there is indeed a Masonic lodge in the Vatican. And now when we go to meet a secretary of a Vatican congregation, or a cardinal sitting on a seat where there used to be holy cardinals who had the Faith and defended the Christian faith, who were men of the Church... now we find ourselves in front of a Freemason. So, is it the same thing? They demand the same obedience. Before, obedience to the Faith was required, to take the anti-modernist oath. A profession of faith was required. Now, what faith do those people ask us to profess? It is no longer the same. They say: Obedience, obedience! Yes, but obedience to the Church. Obedience to what the Church has always commanded! Yes, obedience to the faith of the Church. But obedience to Freemasonry, no. That's it, that's for sure! (at min. 4:45:6:15)"

"Lately, I have been given documents that appear to be completely true, documents that show the correspondence between Monsignor Bonini and the Grand Master of Freemasonry on the entire liturgical reform. The Grand Master of Freemasonry asks Bonini to apply the reform of the apostate priest Roca, who had already predicted everything that had to be done when the Vatican was occupied by Freemasonry. [...] The Grand Master asks Bonini to apply the principle of “naturalization,” the naturalization of the Incarnation, that is, to de-supernaturalize the Incarnation, and thus we arrive at naturalism, and therefore we must apply the principles of local languages, the multiplicity of rites, the multiplicity of the liturgy, and to make the liturgy totally confused, to instill confusion everywhere, and opposition between the different rites. And Bonini replies that he is in complete agreement, and that it will take some time, perhaps ten years. But that at the end of the ten years we will get there. And that with the trust placed in him by Cardinal Lercaro and Pope Paul VI, he is sure of success, and he names all those in the Curia who are affiliated with Freemasonry. He names them and says he will be able to work with them. But some of them must be placed in certain congregations so that [...], in order for the work to be successful, all the congregations must be infiltrated with members of Freemasonry, whom he names: so-and-so, so-and-so, so-and-so... “We must get rid of that one because he is against us... we must get him out...” "the Congregation of the Sacraments must be suppressed," and he managed to put everything under the Congregation of Rites, he managed to put everything under his authority. Everything he says in the letter to the Grand Master of Freemasonry. So what should we do? We certainly want to obey. We are the most obedient to the Church, to everything the Church has always taught and wanted. But not to men who want the destruction of the Church. (at min. 6:17-9:00)"

"The enemy is within the Church. Pope St. Pius X announced it. La Salette announced it. Fatima announced it. Everything had been announced! We have known for a century and a half that he would be introduced into the Church. Well, he is already there, he is already there. Let them not come and ask us to suspend ordinations. Who is asking not to ordain? Who is asking not to form good priests anymore? The Holy Spirit or the Devil? It is clear. Is it normal in the Church to ask a bishop not to form good priests? Is such a thing normal? [...] They know that the doctrine taught there is the true doctrine: they know it perfectly well, they wrote it in the visitors' report, an excellent report in favor of the seminary. That is what Cardinal Garrone told me when he asked me to come to Rome. He said to me: “The report is good, we know that the seminary is good.” But then why close the seminary? Simply because we do not want to follow the Masonic orientation of ecumenism, all those orientations that have been forged by the Masonic lodges. [...] This does not come from the Holy Spirit [...] It is a Masonic lodge that has managed to penetrate the Vatican and has taken everything into its own hands. And it obviously cannot listen to us. It is obvious: we are an obstacle to their plan, to their plan to destroy the priesthood, the Mass, the liturgy. It is obvious! It is obvious! And must we obey? I believe in my conscience before God, when I am told, “Reflect well in your conscience before God on what you are doing.” [...] I truly believe that by doing what I am doing and ordaining the priests that I will ordain, I believe that I am serving the Church. I would not do it if I thought for a moment that it could be contrary to the good of the Church. (at min. 10:07-11:58)"

"[On the issues of religious freedom and “The Church in the Contemporary World”] Cardinal [Giuseppe] Frings from Germany, Cardinal [Franz] Koenig [from Austria]. These figures had already met and discussed these resolutions before the Council, and their specific aim was to compromise with the secular world, to introduce Enlightenment and modernist ideas into Church doctrine. [...] I did everything I could to stop these decisions, which I consider contrary to and destructive of the Catholic Faith. The Council was legitimately convened, but for the purpose of spreading all these ideas. Interviewer': Were there other Cardinals who agreed with you? Mgr. Lefebvre: Yes. There was Cardinal [Ernesto] Ruffini [of Palermo], Cardinal [Giuseppe] Siri [of Genoa], and Cardinal [Antonio] Caggiano [of Buenos Aires]. Interviewer: Were there any bishops who supported you? Mgr. Lefebvre: Yes. Many bishops supported my position. Interviewer: How many bishops? Mgr. Lefebvre: There were more than 250 bishops. They had also formed a group for the purpose of defending the true Catholic Faith."

"At this time, it is important to remind Catholics around the world that obedience to the pope is not a primary virtue. The hierarchy of virtues begins with the three theological virtues of Faith, Hope and Charity, followed by the four cardinal virtues of Justice, Temperance, Prudence and Fortitude. Obedience is a derivative of the cardinal virtue of Justice. Therefore, it is far from being ranked first in the hierarchy of virtues. Some bishops do not want to give the slightest impression of disobeying the Holy Father. I understand how they feel. It is clearly very unpleasant, if not very painful."

"More than a century ago, secret societies, Illuminati, humanists, modernists, and others, of whom we now have all the texts and evidence, were preparing for a Vatican Council in which they would infiltrate their own ideas for a humanist church. [...] The Second Vatican Council was planned by liberals; it was a liberal council; the Pope is a liberal, and those around him are liberals."

"Dialogue is contrary to Catholic doctrine. Dialogue presupposes the meeting of two equal and opposing parties; therefore, it can in no way have anything to do with the Catholic Faith. All this confusion leads to compromises that destroy the doctrine of the Church, to the misfortune of humanity and of the Church itself."

"The idea that all truths are equal, all religions are equal, and therefore all morals have equal dignity, that every conscience is valid in its own way, that everyone can judge theologically what they can do, all these are humanistic ideas of total laxity without any discipline of thought, which lead to the position that everyone can do as they please. All this is absolutely contrary to our Catholic Faith."

"When they go to a modernist church, they do not find the sacred, the mystical character of the Church, all that is truly divine. What leads to God is divine, and they no longer encounter God in these churches. Interviewer: Why should they go to a place where God is absent? Mgr. Lefebvre: The faithful perceive this very well, and the liberal cardinals and their advisors have seriously underestimated the loyalty of the majority of the faithful to their true Faith."

"In vernacular language, it is said that the Precious Blood was shed “for all,” whereas in the Latin text (even the latest revised Latin text) it is said that the Precious Blood is “for many” and not “for all.” [...] The new Offertory prayers do not express the Catholic notion of sacrifice. They simply express the concept of a mere sharing of bread and wine. For example, the Tridentine Mass addresses the prayer to God: “Accept, O holy Father, almighty and eternal God, this Immaculate Victim which your unworthy servant offers to You, my living and true God, in reparation for my countless sins, offenses, and negligence.” The new Mass says: “We offer this bread as the bread of life.” There is no mention of sacrifice or victim. Interviewer: Could you cite a translation that actually contradicts Catholic dogma? Mgr. Lefebvre: Yes. For example, in the Latin text, the Virgin Mary is called Semper Virgo, “Ever Virgin.” In all modern translations, the word “ever” has been removed. This is very serious, because there is a big difference between ‘Virgin’ and “Ever Virgin.” It is very dangerous to tamper with translations of this kind."

"Latin is also important for maintaining the unity of the Church, because when people travel, and people travel more and more abroad nowadays, it is important for them to find the same echo that they heard from a priest at home, whether in the United States, South America, Europe, or anywhere else in the world. They are at home in any (Catholic) church. It is their Catholic Mass that is being celebrated. They have always heard the Latin words since childhood, their parents before them, and their grandparents before them."

"Monsignor Marcel Lefebvre is one of the most important guardians of Catholic Tradition who distinguished themselves in the 20th century. He is a champion of the deposit of faith of the Holy Roman Church, a faithful guardian of the Holy Mass, of the sanctifying integrity of the priesthood, of the Petrine primacy, and of the stable and firm Creed. In the collective imagination, his name is often linked to the figure of a “rebellious” bishop who was disobedient to the Church. Since the 1970s, just uttering his name seemed to evoke who knows what negativity, who knows what divisions... Much of the press and journalists portrayed him as a “schismatic,” someone who wanted to create his own Church... In reality, he was an uncomfortable figure because he spoke with courageous clarity at a time of great confusion in the Church and in the world."

"The distinctive feature of Medieval philosophy, which reached its peak in scholasticism, is the effort to use reason to demonstrate a set of metaphysical doctrines capable of connecting, as far as possible, Hellenic philosophy of nature and Christian theology. While Greek philosophy started from the idea of a nature entirely permeated by the divine and subsequently fell due to the dissociation of these two principles, Scholasticism, for which the divine is essentially infinite personality and perfection, first radically separates God and nature and grants the latter only the attributes indispensable to a contingent existence. Nothing then prevents us from conceiving of perfect divine spirituality as coexisting with imperfect nature. Transcendent with respect to things, God is not affected by their imperfection. And the very imperfection of nature provides reason with the starting point for the arguments by which it establishes the philosophical truths implied in supernatural truths. Thus, the conditions of a natural philosophy were reconciled with those of a religious philosophy. (La scolastica, pp. 10-11)"

"Mysticism consists, according to a beautiful definition I find in Plotinus], in seeing with closed eyes [...] in seeing with the eyes of the soul, while the eyes of the body are closed. The essential phenomenon of mysticism is what is called ecstasy, a state in which, with all communication with the external world interrupted, the soul has the sense of communicating with an internal object, which is the infinite being, God. (La psicologia del misticismo, pp. 58-59)"

"[...] the person of Ravaisson himself is like the act, the fulfilment of the thought which, in his written philosophy, aspires to realise itself. He immediately distinguished himself by a grace, a distinction, a smiling serenity that never disappeared. He attracted people with his good grace and impressed them with his fundamental affinity with the noble and the great. He spoke with absolute simplicity and probity, concerned only with thinking correctly and expressing his thoughts faithfully and naturally, without ever allowing a word of effect or rhetorical artifice to enter his mind. He spoke about everything and was interested in the small pleasures of the world as well as the great questions of philosophy and life. But in all things he saw the link between the ideal and the real. Like the ancient Greeks, he saw the divine in everything. (La filosofia di F. Ravaisson, pp. 115-116)"

"Above all, [Félix Ravaisson] was a writer. He expressed himself in broad, flexible, simple and wise phrases, elegant and solid with an air of abandon, and the logical relationships between ideas and the aesthetic harmony that coordinates them and the creative action that brings forth the details, conditions and elements from the whole and from the beginning. His style is the very soul grasped in his inner life and in the secret movement through which it gives itself and spreads. (La filosofia di F. Ravaisson, p. 116)"

"The whole person of Ravaisson was the manifestation of one unique thing: his intimate union of thought and heart with spiritual and eternal realities. Deep down, he did not believe in death because he was convinced that what passes away has its being only in what remains. He saw things and people not only in their ideas, like Plato, but in their source, which is infinite love, superior to the Idea and unfailing. He not only professed his doctrine with conviction, but lived it. (La filosofia di F. Ravaisson, p. 116)"

"A philosopher is a man who compares the knowledge and beliefs of men in order to investigate their relationships; therefore, we want to know how Plato or Leibniz conceived these relationships; Furthermore, since a philosopher is not a seer to whom truth is revealed in a flash, but a patient researcher who reflects, criticises, doubts, hesitates, and surrenders only to obvious reasons, we want to know by what methodical means, by what observations and reasoning our author arrived at his conclusions. For this is not a matter of unconscious and mechanical work of his brain, but of a conscious and deliberate effort to overcome the limits of his own personality, to think universally, and to discover the truth. (Ch. I, p. 7)"

"[...] the history of philosophy deals with the doctrines conceived by philosophers, not philosophy in general in its entirety, nor the psychological evolution of each thinker in particular; therefore, its essential task, to which all others are subordinate, consists in penetrating and understanding doctrines, explaining them as well as possible, as the author himself would do, and presenting them in accordance with the spirit and, to a certain extent, the style of their author. (Ch. I, pp. 7-8)"

"Socrates' condemnation of ancient physics has its root cause in the ideas inherent in his own nation. Greece could not fully identify with the speculations on the principles of things to which the physiologists had gone. Without doubt, the power of reasoning, the ingenious subtlety, and the marvellous sense of harmony employed by these profound investigators were its heritage; but the immediate application of these spiritual qualities to material objects so foreign to man was contrary to the genius of an essentially political race, especially fond of fine words and fine deeds. (Ch. II, p. 22)"

"Boutroux [...] believes he is criticising science, but instead he criticises a puppet of formal logic, as if the logical power of thought were exhausted in the principle of identity, A is A; but conversely, he establishes a dogmatism worse than the scientific one (because it is philosophical) by considering all reality as a posteriori of experience. (Guido De Ruggiero, La filosofia contemporanea, Editori Laterza, Bari, 19648, part II, Ch. IV, p. 192)"

"Scientific laws, says Boutroux, result from the collaboration of the spirit and things; they are the product of the activity of the spirit applied to a foreign matter; and they represent the effort that the spirit makes to establish a coincidence between things and itself. But what coincidence is this, where it is not known with what thought must coincide? He rightly says that the highest forms of reality cannot be resolved into the lowest; but then he resolves into the lowest... precisely thought, that is, the very thought that alone can make us understand progress from below to above. Consequently, progress is clouded in the void of contingency, and all forms of reality become things in themselves, which thought can do nothing but shadow in its concepts, trying in vain to adapt to them. (Guido De Ruggiero, La filosofia contemporanea, Editori Laterza, Bari, 19648, Part II, Ch. IV, p. 191)"

"The main core around which Boutroux's thought revolves is the problem of science and the meaning of natural laws. From 1874, the year of his thesis, “De la Contingence des lois de la Nature”, until his death, i.e. for just under half a century, Boutroux developed and elaborated his critique of science, always insisting on it and basing his theories on freedom and religion on it, which form, one might say, the positive part of his philosophy. (Ugo Spirito, Il pragmatismo nella filosofia contemporanea, Vallecchi Editore, Firenze, 1921, cap. II, p. 142)"

"In the continuous development of nature and spirit, Boutroux believes it is impossible to establish anything definitive that has eternal value. Man, therefore, who is the greatest exponent of progress, does not know what his progress is tending towards; he does not know, therefore, whether his progress is true progress. Everything disappears into the indeterminate, into confusion, and the sceptical conclusion presents itself as compelling. But no: Boutroux, like James before him, does not lose himself in negation at this point and wants to save himself from scepticism. And so negation itself is transformed into affirmation. It is precisely the indistinct, the confused that contains the reason for life: in it is love, faith, the ideal; in it is that powerful impulse that moves the poet, the artist, the scientist himself, for science would be nothing without faith. But religion thus attained is an empty religion, and the ideal thus established is an ideal that fades into nothingness. (Ugo Spirito, Il pragmatismo nella filosofia contemporanea, Vallecchi Editore, Firenze, 1921, cap. II pp. 150-151)"

"He used to say that a philosophical system is a living thought; and, in truth, he not only taught his philosophy, but lived it, felt it, spread it and defended it in books and with words, in Europe and America, regardless of hardship, with all the ardour of a missionary."

"Poor health, which worsened with the passing of the years, forced him from his youth to withdraw into himself, to seek in his own spirit the best source of joy. Few penetrated his moral intimacy. But just seeing him like that, tall, pale, thin, emaciated, it was easy to guess what a rich inner life was enclosed in that frail body, and how the world of the spirit must have been the only real world for him."

"For many years, the clergy of the parish of Saint-Etienne-du-Mont cherished the memory of that pale teenager, who never missed divine services and zealously fulfilled all religious practices. In turn, Boutroux never forgot the church of his first communion, the church where his spirit had been nourished and strengthened in those religious convictions that were to form the basis and crowning glory of his philosophical views. As an adult, he returned there more than once to recall the sweet memories of his younger years and to meditate at the tomb of Blaise Pascal."

"Respect for the decisions of the Church, veneration and the most pure singleness of affection are too deeply rooted in your hearts that any foreign or presumptuous sentiment should mar the integrity or tarnish the brilliancy of your allegiance or even suggest any grounds to fear these and the like calamities. You will submit in all cheerfulness and humility to the decisions which have been come to you"

"Gifted with keen foresight, Bishop Guigues formed a diocese with the slender resources at his disposal."

"Ici, elle était vraiment fille; elle obéissait à son tempérament de femme ardente et cruelle; elle vivait, plus raffinée et plus sauvage, plus exécrable et plus exquise; elle réveillait plus énergiquement les sens en léthargie de l’homme, ensorcelait, domptait plus sûrement ses volontés, avec son charme de grande fleur vénérienne, poussée dans des couches sacrilèges, élevée dans des serres impies."

"Well meant though it undoubtedly was, and perhaps necessary under the circumstances, the French leader's intervention in the inter-tribal politics of the natives likewise resulted in their paying more heed to the war songs and the satisfaction of their passions than to the question of their spiritual advancement."

"His life was one alternation of triumphs and defeats. At times he had to prevent the Indians from adoring him as a god; at others they were about to sacrifice him to their deities."

"The cardinal showed heroic courage in tending the plague-stricken. He was also a diligent promoter of the decree passed by the council in favour of the Immaculate Conception of Our Lady."

"His violent action at Basle seems to have resulted from an earnest desire for the reform of the Church, and having made his submission to Nicholas V, he is believed to have done penance for his former disloyal and schismatical conduct. He died shortly after in the odour of sanctity. His private life had always been a penitential one."

"There is not in the history of heroism a figure more forlorn and pathetic than that of the President of the Council of Basel."

"I feed only on this. They moisten my mouth, but I cannot swallow. The host gives me a physical impression of nourishment. Jesus, being my whole body, is the one who nourishes me. It is like a Resurrection. [...] I would like to shout to those who ask me if I eat that I eat more than they do, because I am nourished with the Eucharist of the blood and flesh of Jesus. I would like to say that it is they who arrest the fruits of this food within themselves, blocking its effects."

"I loved the sick very much and would have crossed mountains and valleys, if they had let me, to visit a sick person, not to cure them, but to love them"

"Did you notice that Our Mother in Lourdes did not simply say, as she did in Paris on Rue du Bac, that she was conceived without sin, but rather, “I am the Immaculate Conception”! She waited for the Church's proclamation of the dogma of her Holy Immaculate Conception to give us her personal identity before God."

"I believe that my first Communion in private was a taking possession by Our Lord; I believe he took possession of me at that moment."

"God does what he says: it is evident in his creation."

"Jesus did not promise to take away our cross. He told us to carry it on our shoulders, but with Jesus, the cross becomes all love."

"I have always prayed enormously in my life."

"I want to shout to those who ask me if I eat that I eat more than they do, because I feed on the Eucharist of the Blood and Flesh of Jesus. I want to tell them that they are the ones who block the effects of this nourishment within themselves, they block its effects."

"The role of Our Lady is to take care of the details, all the details; it is her maternal function that leads her to this."

"My life is a continuous Mass. I never feel that my bed is a bed; it is an altar, it is a cross."

"The priest encouraged me to pray without saying anything to me."

"Theology is a magnificent science; it is theologians who are boring."

"The sight of priests has always moved me."

"Do not leave poisons on the bedside tables of the sick."

"I don't like reading the lives of saints because each one has their own nuances. I prefer doctrine, not imitation."

"One never implores Mary in vain. I have firm faith that she will grant my request because I believe that we have no other hope than to turn to Divine Providence, which never abandons anyone."

"It does not occur to me to kneel [before Our Lady] but to fly towards her, not to ask, but with a feeling of gratitude and love."

"(In respect of suicide) because it was not her days she wanted to end, but the pain that tortured her."

"To live in the heart of Christ, in the heart of the Trinity, one must live with Mary."

"If Mary is full of grace, it is because she is the Mother of God."

"Suffering teaches charity, abandonment to God, detachment. Suffering teaches us to see and understand. Suffering teaches us to alleviate, to sympathize, to console those who suffer."

"Transforming all my actions into supernatural and divine actions is the most beautiful of truths, it is the greatest and ultimate word of love."

"I want to bring many, many souls to Jesus with my love alone and the entire offering of my sick life, with no other will than that of my God, or rather, with my will fully united to that of my God."

"Mother de Gramont's remarkable intelligence and influence were of great value in the important work entrusted to her, and she established the school in the Rue de Varenne so firmly in its position that the only anxiety of the foundress of the society concerning it was the success, almost too brilliant for her love of hiddenness and simplicity, which attended the work."

"I am a sacrificed man; may the divine will be done."

"Allow Father Leray to go into Vicksburg? Why, I would sooner let in Forrest's Brigade."

"Thérèse of Lisieux was one of the sources of inspiration for the philosopher Henri Bergson during the final stage of his search, in which he found God thanks to the testimony of mystics."

"Christ does not even grant her [to Mary] the satisfactions of motherhood according to the flesh, however legitimate they may be."

"Mary shared the obscure condition of faith that is that of the other redeemed."

"It cannot be said that Mary's Redemption is of a different kind from ours, because it is the same redemption as Christ's, but in its supreme fulfillment and with its own modes of anticipation and perfection."

"If she is our queen, we too will reign with Christ; Mary is not superior to us except in being closer to us."

"Through the apparitions at Lourdes, Our Lady wanted to restore in us a love for the poor and for poverty, a love that is ingenious and liberating."

"Conversion: this is the word that most specifically expresses the meaning of pilgrimage."

"The events at Lourdes present an order, a harmony that becomes increasingly apparent as one delves deeper."

"Mass and the Body of Christ have become the very center of pilgrimage to Lourdes."

"The mid-19th century saw the triumph of the reign of money over the medieval reign of honor and traditions."

"The prayer of Bernadette is contagious."

"The Virgin [Mary] is the one in whom no sin has diminished love."

"Lourdes does not disappoint, even though miracles remain the exception there."

"We sinners oscillate dangerously between harshness and complicity towards others."

"There is no true love for the sinner without hatred for his sin."

"One cannot understand the sinner through sin, because sin is not a positive technique: in its essence it is deprivation, absence, nothingness; it is sin to the exact extent that it decapitates the good of the act performed. It is therefore not a factor of understanding but of obscurity."

"If heaven chooses what does not exist according to the world, it is not for the gratuitous pleasure of mocking the world."

"One is capable of mercy to the extent that one knows one is the object of mercy."

"A contemporary is always at a disadvantage in forming a clear opinion of his age, of those deep causes of which the slow but measured action must inevitably transform society."

"Sire, God protect the crown of the king, for many royal crowns too have been shattered."

"Mary was conceived without sin. Behold! what the Church of Paris glories in professing and maintaining; what her Doctors hold it an honor to teach and defend; what her children are jealous of preserving as one of their dearest possessions after the sacred dogmas of faith; what they do not hesitate to regard as an immediate consequence of their faith, not believing it possible to separate in Mary, the title of Immaculate Virgin from that of Virgin Mother of God, and not considering it possible to refuse the privilege of a Conception without spot, to her who was to receive and who indeed did receive, that of the divine Maternity."

"He was, in the nineteenth century, a superb type of the valiant knight, devoted heart and soul to the defence of the pope's temporal sovereignty, and consecrated himself to that cause in the same spirit which actuated the Crusades of the Middle Ages."

"When a priest can do any good to a soul he must make that his first business."

"Learned, theological, lucid, varied, firm. supernatural, and austere. Mgr. d'Hulst's direction was also sincere. 1 mean he was ever anxious to practise himself what he counselled others to do"

"Gentle as I am now towards every one, it is part of my character never to give way to fear, or to do anything under compulsion."

"Renaudot was, nevertheless, a pioneer in relief work for the poor, journalism, and medicine. The medical theories which he had held against the medical faculties of his times in favour of the use of antimony, laudanum, and quinine, have prevailed since his death."

"In explaining the Sacred Text he made an excellent use of his great familiarity with Greek grammar and authors, availed himself chiefly of the commentaries of St. John Chrysostom and Theodoret, and always remained an enlightened and safe theologian."

"Give to the faithful the example of submission and obedience to the Republic. You have long cherished the hope of enjoying the liberty which makes our brethren of the United States so happy; the liberty you shall have."

"Fear is a natural passion, which, like all the others, is in itself neither bad nor good, but bad when it is excessive and disquieting, good when it is subordinate to reason."

"While the religious idea of a crusade inspired the secular policy of Père Joseph, intense sacerdotal and Apostolic zeal characterized him amid all his political preoccupations."

"Bishop Flaget's great experience, absolute self-denial, and holy life gave him great influence in the councils of the Church and at Rome."

"It is not by a succession of periods of progress and decay only That nations manifest their life and individuality. Taking any one of them at any period of its existence, and comparing it with others, peculiarities immediately show themselves which give it a particular physiognomy whereby it may be at once distinguished from any other; so that, in those agglomerations of men which we call nations or races, we see the variety everywhere observable in Nature, the variety by which God manifests the infinite activity of his creative power."

"Father Thébaud was a man full of energy, even in old age, an untiring student, and well-informed scholar. Withal he was a most agreeable companion, witty and full of life, and universally beloved by his friends and his pupils."

"In none of his writings to which I have had access, does there appear a disposition to judge too favourably of Chinese notions, but the reverse."

"King Louis and Cardinal Jouffroy were a well matched pair."

"There is nothing that can contribute so much to its quietude and stability as the zeal and piety of kings in preserving the discipline of the Church and in defending her liberties."

"Dis, cher aimé! Veux-tu venir vers ces pays où passent les caravanes, à l'ombre des palmiers de Kachmyr ou de Mysore? Veux-tu venir au Bengale choisir, dans les bazars, des roses, des étoffes et des filles d'Arménie, blanches comme le pelage des hermines? Veux-tu lever des armées soulever le nord de l'Iran, comme un jeune Cyaxare? Ou, plutôt, si nous appareillions pour Ceylan, où sont les blancs éléphants aux tours vermeilles, les aras de feu dans les feuillages, et d'en-soleillées demeures où tombent les pluies des jets d'eau dans les cours de marbre? [...] Quel plaisir d'attacher nos patins d'acier sur les routes de la pâle Suède! ou vers Christiania, dans les sentiers et les fjords éclatants des monts de la Norvège!"

"La Terre, dis-tu? Qu'a-t-elle donc jamais réalisé, cette goutte de fange glacée, dont l'Heure ne sait que mentir au milieu du ciel?"

"Vivre? les serviteurs feront cela pour nous."

"In our opinion nothing so clearly proves the assistance of the Holy Spirit and the necessity for a ruling power in the bosom of the Church as this law of harmonious development. It would seem that those who reject the idea of such a power are obliged either to ignore all that is done by that power and to raise up an entirely new Church, or to take the illogical and insincere method of adopting for their own a part only of the Church's institutions and rejecting the rest."

"The most obscure of men has his duty, and this is my excuse for associating with great minds in sending forth a protest against evil, as a child does his duty in joining with strong men to cast a drop of water upon a conflagration."

"As I could not penetrate into the capital of Louisiana, without exposing the sacred character with — which I was invested, I thought it more prudent to commence the attack at those points of my diocese which were the least ably defended; judging that here, as in a citadel, I might assemble my forces, and gradually obtaining possession of the surrounding country, the strongest place would ultimately be compelled to yield."

"Mitis depone colla, Sigamber; adora quod incendisti, incende quod adorasti."

"Iesu Christi, quem Chrotchildis praedicat esse filium Dei vivi, qui dare auxilium laborantibus victuriamque in te sperantibus tribuere diceris, tuae opis gloriam devotus efflagito, ut, si mihi victuriam super hos hostes indulseris et expertus fuero illam virtutem, quam de te populus tuo nomine dicatus probasse se praedicat, credam tibi et in nomine tuo baptizer. Invocavi enim deos meos, sed, ut experior, elongati sunt ab auxilio meo; unde credo, eos nullius esse potestatis praeditos, qui sibi oboedientibus non occurrunt. Te nunc invoco, tibi credere desidero, tantum ut eruar ab adversariis meis."

"Many of the people, deserted by their leaders and fearing future want, sold their bows, took up their pilgrims’ staves, and returned to their homes as cowards."

"Who ever heard of such a mixture of languages in one army, since there were French, Flemings, Frisians, Gauls, Allobroges, Lotharingians, Allemani, Bavarians, Normans, English, Scots, Aquitanians, Italians, Dacians, Apulians, Iberians, Bretons, Greeks, and Armenians? If any Breton or Teuton wished to question me, I could neither understand nor answer."

"The material is scanty; the historian must read between the lines; he must above all avoid rash generalizations. It is evident that Arnold was right, human nature has not varied much throughout the ages. While it is not possible to form a picture of an average Crusader, as elusive a character as the 'economic man,' it is possible to form some concept of Fulcher's character and limitations, and through him of the acts and points of view of other Crusaders in the time of the First Crusade and in the years when the Kingdom of Jerusalem was still a strong and prosperous colony."

"I think you will hardly take him by surprise. However, you can come with me, and we will search for him. Did I not tell you from the first that you would not find him?"

"Colmar worked like a true apostle."

"As the conversion of these poor folk is not the work of man, but the effect of the mercy of our Divine Master, let us endeavour to obtain it by prayers and holy deeds. A day never passes, without my remembering these unfortunate people before the altar. May it please the Mercy of the Lord to grant the prayers that I offer for their conversion!"

"For some years past, people appear only to take pleasure in extolling those who have been engaged in the work of destruction. The most illustrious public bodies take pleasure in listening to the praises of those who have ruined the old state of society, and no man is considered clever, learned, or virtuous, unless he has been at least half a regicide. As for me I request a little space for the politicians who create, preserve, or add to a state,—for the men whose works still endure, and survive all those who declaimed against them."

"The nations which have been converted to Christianity are in a way like branches which have been grafted upon Judaism. They were Jews who announced the Gospel to the world, and they were Jews who composed the first Christian community, to which all the other peoples of the world are successively joining themselves. Evidently, therefore, these Jews in becoming Christians did not change their religion, for they only acknowledged the Messias whom they were expecting ; it was the Greeks, the Romans, and the Egyptians, and all the heathen who, in embracing the faith, renounced the worship of idols."

"Character is one of the most estimable gifts of the Creator, with which he has enriched your family. Exercise courage then, and strength of mind, to rise superior to misfortune. Let no economy appear a sacrifice. At this moment we are all poor."

"As a diplomat, Fesch sometimes employed questionable methods. His relationship to the emperor and his cardinalitical dignity often made his position a difficult one; at least he could never be accused of approving the violent measures resorted to by Napoleon. As Archbishop, he was largely instrumental in re-establishing the Brothers of Christian Doctrine and recalling the Jesuits, under the name of Pacanarists. The Archdiocese of Lyons is indebted to him for some eminently useful institutions. It must be admitted, moreover, that in his pastoral capacity Fesch took a genuine interest in the education of priests."

"Do not imagine each moment that all the Chinese are at my heels and think only of destroying me. These are the men whom I love much more than I fear."

"My party and my friends can only profit by being better known; our dear country itself has everything to gain by getting to know them better, and, as it knows them, to accord them more of the sympathy and respect which is their due."

"This partisan of monarchy took office under President Louis Bonaparte; this defender of the coercive authority of the Church was ranked among "Liberal Catholics". To take advantage of opportunities was henceforth de Falloux's maxim as a practical statesman."

"A Christian is a complete being, a being having the knowledge of its strength in the order of nature, and walking under the eye of God to perfection, to supernatural transfiguration, but never to the annihilation of the faculties."

"The Catholic Church has no other weapons but prayer and brotherhood among all peoples. I leave here hundreds of young people who are the future of humanity. I beg them not to give up in the face of violence but to be apostles of the civilization of love."

"Since perhaps there are some, who may think themselves concerned in this History, because they are the Grand-children or Descendants of those who are here mentioned, I desire them to consider, Writing like a faithfull Historian, I am oblig'd sincerely to relate either the good or ill, which they have done. If they find themselves offended, they must take their satisfaction on those who have prescrib'd the Laws of History: let them give an account of their own rules; for Historians are indispensably bound to follow them; and the sum of our reputation consists in a punctual execution of their orders."

"May God forgive thee, for I forgive thee!"

"The murder of the legate Pierre de Castelnau sent a thrill of horror throughout Christendom like that caused by the assassination of Becket thirty-eight years before. Of its details, however, the accounts are so contradictory that it is impossible to speak of it with precision."

"On September 19, 1846, we saw a beautiful Lady. We never said that this lady was the Blessed Virgin but we always said that it was a beautiful Lady."

"L'apparition de la Très Saint Vierger sur la Montagne de La Salette par la bergère de La Salette avec l'imprimatur de Mgr l'éveque de Lecce, Pierre Téqui éditeur, Paris, 2018 (reprint), Ch. III pp. 16-26. ISBN 978-2-7403-2158-4 (in French) (full text of the messages given by the Virgin Mary to Mélanie Calvat and Maximin Giraud, firstly published on November 15, 1879 with nihil obstat and imprimatur by bishop Salvatore Luigi Zola and Archbishop Carmelo Cosma, vicar general of the Archdiocese of Lecce)."

"Fluery had the qualities of a great minister. He was the first to foresee that France would not always be at enmity with the Hapsburghs."

"It may be asked what possible object a redactor could have had in combining the narrative of a rebellion against civil authority with another having for its moral to warn against usurpation of the priesthood. The story presents nothing improbable. We need not search deeply into history to find similar examples of parties with different, or even conflicting interests, uniting for a common end."

"Great iniquities still exist in the world. Slavery has been holding her ground for the last eighty years in the United States, and was a stain upon the American Republic long before becoming the instrument of her ruin, or at least of a scandalous dissolution. In Sweden, civil liberty of conscience is still proscribed by laws of another age, and is only bought by exile or loss of property. Perfidy and violence are going hand in hand to destroy the nationality of Poland, and crush in her the last struggles of Catholic faith by the united force of schism and despotism. In fine, there is in the East of Europe an anti-Christian empire crumbling away visibly under the weight of its own corruption; whose protestations do not hinder indignant Europe from requiring an account of the thousands of victims butchered by Moslem fanaticism almost under our eyes, which empire is, nevertheless, protected by the mutual jealousy and distrust of western nations. All these facts are so many outrages upon justice, and so many insolent triumphs of might over right."

"The human race experienced on a grand scale what we experience on a small scale, namely the struggle between spirit and flesh, reason and passion. God made us one, but sin divided us, and since then there have been two men within us, Cain and Abel, the first carnal and the second spiritual, one earthly and the other heavenly, one of man and the other of God. (vol. I, p. 98)"

"The Brahmins, these much-vaunted philosophers, willingly call themselves the [gods] of the earth, and to justify that title, they attribute this genealogy to themselves; now they descend from those seven Richis or penitents who were saved from the flood together with Manou, and who, because of their extreme holiness, were transported to heaven and are the seven stars of the Great Bear; Now, and this is the most popular fable, when Brahma wanted to create men, he drew the Brahmins from his head; the Kchatrias or warriors from his shoulders; the Vaishyas or merchants from his belly; and the Shudras or artisans from his feet. These are the four castes established and consecrated by the philosophers of India as the foundation of the religious and political constitution. (vol. I, p. 707)"

"[...] the Brahmins are the Pharisees of India, because of their affectation in their way of life, their scrupulousness about external stains, their constant use of ablutions and bathing, their zeal, their attention to detail, the same negligence of what is most essential, the same pride, the same ostentation, and the same hypocrisy. Nor are there any who literally practice what the Savior says, that is, who drink through a strainer for fear of swallowing an insect, while swallowing a camel, that is, trampling on justice, humanity, and mercy. (vol. I, p. 708)"

"Far below the lowest caste and well below the sudras, a quarter of the Indian population languishes in servitude, disgrace, and misery, under the name of parias. Eating with these unfortunate people, or touching food prepared by them, or even drinking water drawn by them; using earthenware vessels they have held in their hands; setting foot in their dwellings or allowing them to enter one's own, are, in the eyes of philosophers, crimes that exclude an Indian from his caste. (vol. I, p. 708)"

"Epicurus may therefore turn and twist as he likes, deny Providence, deny the punishments and rewards of another life; make justice, friendship, and every other virtue serve pleasure; reduce the human intellect to combinations of atoms, and aspire, as the highest of goods, to the condition of the beast, which always finds itself in the same place, alone against all, alone in all places, against all times and against all men or the whole human race, which never ceases to proclaim a rewarding and avenging God, the immortality of the soul and the eternal distinction between good and evil, and thus condemns the Epicurean system as equally false and shameful. (vol. I, p. 774)"

"According to the false prophet of Mecca, everything happens out of inevitable necessity; there is no free will in man: God works all actions in us, both good and bad; so that he punishes the wicked for the sins that he himself has wrought in them. To those who cried out against such blasphemy, Muhammad gave only one answer: This is a mystery, a secret. Yes, the mystery of Satan, the author of all evil, who wants to place all blame on God himself, the author of all good. Now, the same mystery of impiety is revealed in Lutheranism. According to the false prophet of Wittenberg, as according to the false prophet of Mecca, everything happens to man out of inevitable necessity, and there is no free will in us. God works in us both evil and good; and he will punish us not only for the evil we could not avoid, but also for the good we did as best we could. In this, Luther greatly surpasses Muhammad in impiety, for Muhammad never said that God would punish us for the same good, and that good works were as many sins."

"Although Champollion was an avowed revolutionary and an enthusiastic Bonapartist, one of his earliest discoveries discredited some of the theories of Dupuis’s supporters, and he and his decipherment were therefore welcomed by the Church and the Restoration nobility. On the other hand, his championing of Egypt over Greece combined with his political beliefs to infuriate Hellenist and Indianist scholars, who continued to do all they could to block his academic career."

"He was untiring in his efforts to conserve the moral life within his diocese, especially among the clergy and the religious orders."

"Though his services were peculiarly valuable n his early fields of labour as he had mastered both the Montagnais and the English languages, yet an able man being needed to organize parish and mission work among the French Canadians at Lowell, Father Garin was ordered thither and in a short time his remarkable good sense, courteous manner, and kindly disposition won for him a wonderful influence over his people."

"I desire, if by any possibility I should become a priest, to be a missionary, and if I am a missionary to be a martyr."

"Persecution is upon us; it will be terrible; we will pass through torrents of blood."

"France must have the blood of the pure to raise her again; which one of us indeed, is worthy to offer his life, and what a joy, should we be chosen."

"There will be sacrifices in thus referring everything to God; there are sacrifices, and there will be always. But what matters it ? This is our life, the end for which we were created, our destination, — to sacrifice everything to God with devotion and courage, and to find everything in God in eternity."

"How is it possible we should taste true joy for one moment, in this life, in which we are beset with miseries, and sin, — are continually in danger of being lost forever, and are exiles from Paradise, our true country?"

"The Saviour arose into heaven through His own power as Lord and Creator...Mary arose into heaven lifted up by grace, not through her own power. This is why one is called Ascension and the other Assumption."

"Let Man remember that he is the Master, but not a Tyrant."