In my experience, many Americans think of religion as important and want to do whatever they can to support it. But if you ask them what they themselves believe, you'll find they're very uncertain about their religious beliefs. They don't actually accept the theology of their official church.

If God is to create or to preserve a creature, God must be present and must make and preserve God's creation both in its innermost and outermost aspects.

For from the error of not knowing, or understanding, what sin is, there necessarily arises another error, that people cannot know or understand what grace is.

You know Balbec so well - do you have friends in the area?' I have friends wherever there are companies of trees, wounded but not vanquished, which huddle together with touching obstinacy to implore an inclement and pitiless sky.' That is not what I meant,' interrupted my father, as obstinate as the trees and as pitiless as the sky.

Life is more important than architecture.

Every man contemplates an angel in his future self.