Antonin Sertillanges Quotes

The man who is too isolated grows timid, abstracted, a little odd: He stumbles along amid realities like a sailor who has just come off his ship; he has lost the sense of the human lot; he seems to look on you as if you were a "proposition" to be inserted in a syllogism, or an example to be put down in a notebook.

Look in the heart and write ... The man who writes like that, without pride or artifice, as it were for himself, is in reality speaking for humanity. Humanity will recognize itself in him, because it is human nature that has inspired the discourse. Life recognizes life!

Very often, gleams of light come in a few minutes' sleeplessness, in a second
perhaps; you must fix them. To entrust them to the relaxed brain is like writing on water; there is every chance that on the morrow there will be no slightest trace left of any happening.

The life of study is austere and imposes grave obligations. It pays, it pays richly; but it exacts an initial outlay that few are capable of. The athletes of the mind, like those of the playing field, must be prepared for privations, long training, a sometimes superhuman tenacity. We must give ourselves from the heart, if truth is to give itself to us. ‪#Truth‬ serves only its slaves.

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

Friendship is an obstetric art; it draws out our richest and deepest resources; it unfolds the wings of our dreams and hidden indeterminate thoughts; it serves as a check on our judgements, tries out our new ideas, keeps up our ardor, and inflames our enthusiasm.

Truth serves only its slaves.

The general who counts only his casualties, the prisoners and the material that he has lost, the positions that he has not taken, the chances that remain to his enemy, and compares his small achievement with his vaster plan, has no sense of triumph. If he confines himself to such calculations he loses the fruit of his victory; in fact, if he is very ambitious, he will regard his victory as a reverse. For is it not a reverse to have done something which is not enough? The Savior's ambition is insatiable. For one soul He would give the whole of His blood and the whole of His heart. But precisely for that reason, when a soul is lost, even a single soul, He feels that to save it He would leave and forget all the others. His parable tells us so: "If a man hath a hundred sheep, and one of them should go astray: doth he not leave the ninety-nine in the mountains, and go to seek that which is gone astray?"179

If it is a book, do not leave it without being able to sum it up and to estimate its value.

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

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

It is a painful thing to say to oneself: by choosing one road I am turning my back on a thousand others. Everything is interesting; everything might be useful; everything attracts and charms a noble mind; but death is before us; mind and matter make their demands; willy-nilly we must submit and rest content as to things that time and wisdom deny us, with a glance of sympathy which is another act of our homage to the truth.

How puerile it would be, and what a dangerous heresy from the religious point of view, to believe that passion in its proper place is offensive to God! We are not Manicheans, that we should incline to believe that the flesh is under a curse, and that all matter springs from the Principle of Evil. Rather do we say that matter and the flesh come from God

Judas does not love. He does not love and that is why he betrays. He does not love, and that is why, having cast aside treason because it horrifies him, he ends by detesting himself without repenting. Self-hatred is salutary only when associated with the love of God. Alone it is homicidal; it has the power to destroy everything and it has no power at all to repair.

Do you want to have a humble share in perpetuating wisdom among men, in gathering up the inheritance of the ages, in formulating the rules of the mind for the present time, in discovering facts and causes, in turning men's wandering eyes towards first causes and their hearts towards supreme ends, in reviving if necessary some dying flame, in organizing the propaganda of truth and goodness? That is the lot reserved for you. It is surely worth a little extra sacrifice; it is worth steadily pursuing with jealous passion.

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