More than in any other performing arts the lack of respect for acting seems to spring from the fact that every layman considers himself a valid critic.

Imagination and fiction make up more than three quarters of our real life.

Nothing can have as its destination anything other than its origin. The contrary idea, the idea of progress, is poison.

One cannot imagine St. Francis of Assisi talking about rights.

Oppression that is clearly inexorable and invincible does not give rise to revolt but to submission.

Petroleum is a more likely cause of international conflict than wheat.

Real genius is nothing else but the supernatural virtue of humility in the domain of thought.

It is not the cause for which men took up arms that makes a victory more just or less, it is the order that is established when arms have been laid down.

Evil, when we are in its power, is not felt as evil, but as a necessity, even a duty.

If we are suffering illness, poverty, or misfortune, we think we shall be satisfied on the day it ceases. But there too, we know it is false; so soon as one has got used to not suffering one wants something else.

If Germany, thanks to Hitler and his successors, were to enslave the European nations and destroy most of the treasures of their past, future historians would certainly pronounce that she had civilized Europe.

I would suggest that barbarism be considered as a permanent and universal human characteristic which becomes more or less pronounced according to the play of circumstances.

I suffer more from the humiliations inflicted by my country than from those inflicted on her.

I am not a Catholic; but I consider the Christian idea, which has its roots in Greek thought and in the course of the centuries has nourished all of our European civilization, as something that one cannot renounce without becoming degraded.

Humility is attentive patience.