I have not loved the world, nor the world me.
Everything direct is positive, everything indirect is negative.
Take Bach or Schubert: Their music was dedicated to God but filled and shaped their worldly lives. If you are a committed atheist, you lean back and miss all the richness of that history.
You cannot spend two thousand years trying to understand God and then simply abandon the question and declare that we’re not interested in it anymore.
I believe that the most important condition for faith is sensitivity to beauty.
Those who use language and have nothing but language to express themselves live in a cage that cannot feel comfortable.
As an atheist, you cannot fully make sense of the music, you have no explanation for the perennial motion and rhythm.
I didn't choose literature. Literature chose me. There was no decision on my side.
Society not only continues to exist by transmission, by communication, but it may fairly be said to exist in transmission, in communication.
To kill a relative of whom you are tired is something. But to inherit his property afterwards, that is genuine pleasure.
The order of things consents to virtue.