Quotes by Jacques Maritain

• Poetry proceeds from the totality of man, sense, imagination, intellect, love, desire, instinct, blood and spirit together.
• A man of courage flees forward, in the midst of new things.
• A single idea, if it is right, saves us the labor of an infinity of experiences.
• Americans seem sometimes to believe that if you are a thinker you must be a frowning bore, because thinking is so damn serious.
• Christianity taught men that love is worth more than intelligence.
• Gratitude is the most exquisite form of courtesy.
• The great and admirable strength of America consists in this, that America is truly the American people.
• I don't see America as a mainland, but as a sea, a big ocean. Sometimes a storm arises, a formidable current develops, and it seems it will engulf everything. Wait a moment, another current will appear and bring the first one to naught.
• We don't love qualities; we love a person; sometimes by reason of their defects as well as their qualities.
• The poet knows himself only on the condition that things resound in him, and that in him, at a single awakening, they and he come forth together out of sleep.