History is the only laboratory we have in which to test the consequences of thought.

- Etienne Gilson

Humans feel at home in a world of things, whose essences and laws it can grasp and define in terms of concepts; but shy and ill at ease in a world of…

- Etienne Gilson

Why are there organized beings? Why is there something rather than nothing? Here again, I fully understand a scientist who refuses to ask it. He is w…

- Etienne Gilson

Faith comes to intelligence as a light that overflows it with joy and inspires it with a certitude that does away with question.

- Etienne Gilson

Man is not a mind that thinks, but a being who knows other beings as true, who loves them as good and who enjoys them as beautiful. For all that whic…

- Etienne Gilson

To minds tormented by the divine thirst, it is useless to offer the most certain knowledge of the laws of numbers and the arrangement of the universe

- Etienne Gilson

If our previous analyses are correct, they all point to the same conclusion, that metaphysical adventures are doomed to fail when their authors subst…

- Etienne Gilson

Philosophy always buries its undertakers.

- Etienne Gilson

Radiance belongs to being considered precisely as beautiful: it is, in being, that which catches the eye, or the ear, or the mind, and makes us want …

- Etienne Gilson