Life is a crusade in the service of God. Whether we wished to or not, we set out as crusaders to free - not the Holy Sepulcher - but that God buried in matter and in our souls.

I should learn to run, to wrestle, to swim, to ride horses, to row, to drive a car, to fire a rifle. I should fill my soul with flesh. I should fill my flesh with soul. In fact, I should reconcile at last within me the two internal antagonists.

Every man has his folly, but the greatest folly of all, in my view, is not to have one.

I felt once more how simple and frugal a thing is happiness: a glass of wine, a roast chestnut, a wretched little brazier, the sound of the sea. Nothing else.

The struggle between God and man breaks out in everyone, together with the longing for reconciliation... God does not love weak souls and flabby flesh. The spirit desires to wrestle with flesh which is strong and full of resistance. It is a carnivorous bird which is incessantly hungry; it eats flesh and, by assimilating it, makes it disappear.

Life's true face is the skull.