Quotes from Antonin Sertillanges

The true bread had to be steeped in blood, broken with the gesture of loving sacrifice, distributed in the communion of a banquet for the whole world, and this upon a hill which foreshadowed Calvary, and like Calvary was destined to endure forever.

The more a man departs from lawful authority, that is, authority normally constituted, whether by God or by the nature of things, the more he is obliged to fall back into arbitrary claims to authority.

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

Love truth and its fruits of life, for yourself and for others; devote to study and to the profitable use of study the best part of your time and your heart.

Keep your soul free. What matters most in life is not knowledge, but character … There is a knowledge other than that which is of the domain of memory: the knowledge of how to live. Study must be an act of life, must serve life, must feel itself impregnated with life. Of the two kinds of men, those who endeavor to know something, and those who try to be someone, the palm is to the second. What we know is like a beginning, a rough sketch only; the man is the finished work.

Every work is great when it is in exact measure. A work that exceeds its proper limits is the least of all. We have said repeatedly that your work, your proper work, is unique; another man's work is equally so, do not interchange with him. You alone can do well what is laid upon you; you would do badly what your neighbor will do well. God is satisfied in all.

By this act He affirms that the enemy of love is pride, and that the enemy of all good is the refusal to love.

Variety is precious when it expresses nature more richly by developing various aspects of it; but the variety that consists in producing cripples and abortions instead of normal human beings has nothing to commend it to the lover of mankind.

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