Ag Sertillanges Quotes

When silence takes possession of you; when far from the racket of the human highway the sacred fire flames up in the stillness; when peace, which is the tranquillity of order, puts order in your thoughts, feelings, and investigations, you are in the supreme disposition for learning; you can bring your materials together; you can create; you are definitely at your working point; it is not the moment to dwell on wretched trifles, to half live while time runs by, and to sell heaven for nothings.

Flee those minds that can never rise above the academic rules, that are the slaves of their work instead of doing it in the fullness of light.

Flee those minds that can never rise above their academic rules, that are the slaves of their work instead of doing it in the fullness of light.

Retirement is the laboratory of the spirit; interior solitude and silence are its two wings. All great works were prepared in the desert, including the redemption of the world.

The order of the mind must correspond to the order of things. In the world of reality, everything rises toward the divine, everything depends on it, because everything springs from it. In the effigy of the real within us, we can note the same dependence, unless we have turned topsy-turvy the true relations of things.

By moderation in speech, you will also attain the continuous recollection and that wise give and take which are so important a provision for you. To speak for the sake of what must be said, to express a timely feeling or a useful idea and then to be silent, is the secret of keeping possession on yourself while giving something to others, instead of letting your own torch go out as it lights other torches...Besides that is the way to give weight to one’s words. Speech is weighty when one perceives silence beneath it, when it conceals and yet suggests a treasure behind the words, a treasure that it gives out little by little, as is fitting, without haste and frivolous excitement.

Contemplation is not compatible with the complications and burdens of an excessively comfortable life.