''War is not a true adventure. It is a mere ersatz. Where ties are established, where problems are set, where creation is stimulated—there you have adventure. But there is no adventure in heads-or-tails, in betting that the toss will come out of life or death. War is not an adventure. It is a disease. It is like typhus.''
''Each man must look to himself to teach him the meaning of life. It is not something discovered: it is something moulded.''
''Perfection is finally attained not when there is no longer anything to add but when there is no longer anything to take away, when a body has been stripped down to its nakedness.''
''One can be a brother only in something. Where there is no tie that binds men, men are not united but merely lined up.''
''Transport of the mails, transport of the human voice, transport of flickering pictures—in this century as in others our highest accomplishments still have the single aim of bringing men together.''
''Treason implies responsibility for something, control over something, influence upon something, knowledge of something. Treason in our time is a proof of genius. Why, I want to know, are not traitors decorated?''
''The aeroplane has unveiled for us the true face of the earth.''
''What was my body to me? A kind of flunkey in my service. Let but my anger wax hot, my love grow exalted, my hatred collect in me, and that boasted solidarity between me and my body was gone.''
''The injustice of defeat lies in the fact that its most innocent victims are made to look like heartless accomplices. It is impossible to see behind defeat, the sacrifices, the austere performance of duty, the self-discipline and the vigilance that are there—those things the god of battle does not take account of.''
''It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.''
''A civilization is a heritage of beliefs, customs, and knowledge slowly accumulated in the course of centuries, elements difficult at times to justify by logic, but justifying themselves as paths when they lead somewhere, since they open up for man his inner distance.''
''We say nothing essential about the cathedral when we speak of its stones. We say nothing essential about Man when we seek to define him by the qualities of men.''
''The machine does not isolate man from the great problems of nature but plunges him more deeply into them.''
''Grown-ups never understand anything for themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them.''
''Love does not consist in gazing at each other but in looking together in the same direction.''
''Only the unknown frightens men. But once a man has faced the unknown, that terror becomes the known.''
''If France is to be judged, judge her not by the effects of her defeat but by her readiness to sacrifice herself.''
''Night, the beloved. Night, when words fade and things come alive. When the destructive analysis of day is done, and all that is truly important becomes whole and sound again. When man reassembles his fragmentary self and grows with the calm of a tree.''
''Only he can understand what a farm is, what a country is, who shall have sacrificed part of himself to his farm or country, fought to save it, struggled to make it beautiful. Only then will the love of farm or country fill his heart.''
''Whoever loves above all the approach of love will never know the joy of attaining it.''
