Antonin Sertillanges

“The more a man departs from lawful authority, that is, authority normally constituted, whether by God or by the nature of things,…

— Antonin Sertillanges

“Just as no particular branch of knowledge is self-sufficing so all branches together are not self-sufficing without the queen of knowledge, philosophy,…

— Antonin Sertillanges

One finds one's way only by taking it.

— Antonin Sertillanges

“Do you want to have a humble share in perpetuating wisdom among men, in gathering up the inheritance of the ages, in…

— Antonin Sertillanges

“To upset the order of nature, and even more the order of God, who, for us, is more natural than nature itself,…

— Antonin Sertillanges

“Whoever expresses truth expresses God, the Word, and utters therefore a word of God.”

— Antonin Sertillanges

Friendship is an obstetric art; it draws out our richest and deepest resources; it unfolds the wings of our dreams and hidden…

— Antonin Sertillanges

“The good is the brother of the true; it will help its brother.”

— Antonin Sertillanges

“Inspiration is incompatible with selfish desire. Whoever wants something for himself sets truth aside. Such aims can only degrade work.”

— Antonin Sertillanges

“There are antecedent passion and consequent passion, that is, passion which precedes the use of reason or faith, and so hinders it;…

— Antonin Sertillanges

Very often, gleams of light come in a few minutes' sleeplessness, in a second perhaps; you must fix them. To entrust them…

— Antonin Sertillanges

“Variety is precious when it expresses nature more richly by developing various aspects of it; but the variety that consists in producing…

— Antonin Sertillanges

“She [the Church] proclaims that we owe love, honour and service to God in the first place, and after God not to…

— Antonin Sertillanges

“The man who is too isolated grows timid, abstracted, a little odd: He stumbles along amid realities like a sailor who has…

— Antonin Sertillanges

“Is it not strange that it should be precisely our century—a century of social science and of solidarity if ever there was…

— Antonin Sertillanges

“When we want to awaken a thought in anyone, what are the means at our disposal? One only, to produce in him…

— Antonin Sertillanges

“How puerile it would be, and what a dangerous heresy from the religious point of view, to believe that passion in its…

— Antonin Sertillanges

It is a painful thing to say to oneself: by choosing one road I am turning my back on a thousand others.…

— Antonin Sertillanges

The reward of a work is to have produced it; the reward of effort is to have grown by it.

— Antonin Sertillanges

“We hear our legislators proclaim unceasingly their respect for the individual conscience, though it be a religious conscience, and themselves anticlericals. All…

— Antonin Sertillanges

Courage is sustained by calling up anew the vision of the goal.

— Antonin Sertillanges

We must beware of yielding to the pressure of a spirit of cowardly conformity which proclaims itself everybody's friend in the hope…

— Antonin Sertillanges

“Could error arise from a true demonstration, and falsehood proceed from duly verified authority? In no domain could this easily happen, and…

— Antonin Sertillanges

“Look in the heart and write...The man who writes like that, without pride or artifice, as it were for himself, is in…

— Antonin Sertillanges