“The one thing that matters is the effort.”
“What saves a man is to take a step. Then another step.”
“Of what worth are convictions that bring not suffering?”
“When you give yourself, you receive more than you give.”
“I know but one freedom and that is the freedom of the mind.”
“The aeroplane has unveiled for us the true face of the earth.”
“More wisdom is latent in things as they are than in all the words men use.”
“Love is not just looking at each other, it's looking in the same direction.”
“How could drops of water know themselves to be a river? Yet the river flows on.”
“Whoever loves above all the approach of love will never know the joy of attaining it.”
“True happiness comes from the joy of deeds well done, the zest of creating things new.”
“A civilization is built on what is required of men, not on that which is provided for them.”
“It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”
“Only the unknown frightens men. But once a man has faced the unknown, that terror becomes the known.”
“Love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction.”
“A pile of rocks ceases to be a rock when somebody contemplates it with the idea of a cathedral in mind.”
“The machine does not isolate man from the great problems of nature but plunges him more deeply into them.”
“One can be a brother only in something. Where there is no tie that binds men, men are not united but merely lined up.”
“It is in the compelling zest of high adventure and of victory, and in creative action, that man finds his supreme joys.”
“Each man must look to himself to teach him the meaning of life. It is not something discovered: it is something molded.”
“Charity never humiliated him who profited from it, nor ever bound him by the chains of gratitude, since it was not to him but to God that the gift was made.”
“We say nothing essential about the cathedral when we speak of its stones. We say nothing essential about Man when we seek to define him by the qualities of men.”
“How could there be any question of acquiring or possessing, when the one thing needful for a man is to become -- to be at last, and to die in the fullness of his being.”
“For true love is inexhaustible; the more you give, the more you have. And if you go to draw at the true fountainhead, the more water you draw, the more abundant is its flow.”
“Perfection is finally attained not when there is no longer anything to add but when there is no longer anything to take away, when a body has been stripped down to its nakedness.”
“What was my body to me? A kind of flunkey in my service. Let but my anger wax hot, my love grow exalted, my hatred collect in me, and that boasted solidarity between me and my body was gone.”
“Transport of the mails, transport of the human voice, transport of flickering pictures --in this century as in others our highest accomplishments still have the single aim of bringing men together.”
“Only he can understand what a farm is, what a country is, who shall have sacrificed part of himself to his farm or country, fought to save it, struggled to make it beautiful. Only then will the love of farm or country fill his heart.”
“Night, the beloved. Night, when words fade and things come alive. When the destructive analysis of day is done, and all that is truly important becomes whole and sound again. When man reassembles his fragmentary self and grows with the calm of a tree.”
“To be a man is to be responsible. It is to feel shame at the sight of what seems to be unmerited misery. It is to take pride in a victory won by one's comrades. It is to feel, when setting one's stone, that one is contributing to the building of the world.”