The proper method of philosophy consists in clearly conceiving the insoluble problems in all their insolubility and then in simply contemplating them, fixedly and tirelessly, year after year, without any hope, patiently waiting.

 One can only accept the existence of affliction by considering it as a distance.

God created through love and for love. God did not create anything except love itself, and the means to love. He created love in all its forms. He created beings capable of love from all possible distances. Because no other could do it, he himself went to the greatest possible distance, the infinite distance. This infinite distance between God and God, this supreme tearing apart, this agony beyond all others, this marvel of love, is the crucifixion. Nothing can be further from God than that which has been made accursed.

This tearing apart, over which supreme love places the bond of supreme union, echoes perpetually across the universe in the midst of the silence, like two notes, separate yet melting into one, like pure and heart-rending harmony. This is the Word of God. The whole creation is nothing but its vibration. When human music in its greatest purity pierces our soul, this is what we hear through it. When we have learnt to hear the silence, this is what we grasp more distinctly through it.

Those who persevere in love hear this note from the very lowest depths into which affliction has thrust them. From that moment they can no longer have any doubt.

Men struck down by affliction are at the foot of the Cross, almost at the greatest possible distance from God. It must not be thought that sin is a greater distance. Sin is not a distance, it is a turning of our gaze in the wrong direction. ("The Love of God and Affliction" in Waiting for God)

People used to sacrifice to the gods, and the wheat grew. Today, one works at a machine and one gets bread from the baker’s. The relation between the act and its result is no clearer than before. That is why the will plays so small a part in life today. We spend our time in wishing. Ambiguity of the word wish . . . Eliminate all wishing from human life. Substitute will—and give up expecting anything that is not the reward of work. If you get anything more, receive it as a grace . . . Ambiguity of the word grace, too. (the most beautiful word . . .) (Love can only be pure to the extent that it is, precisely, a grace). ' We no longer know how to receive grace. (First and Last Notebooks)

[Never forget that you have the whole world, the whole of life, before you . . . And that, for you, life can be and ought to be more real, more full, and more joyful than it has perhaps ever been for any human being . . . Don’t mutilate it in advance by any renunciation. Don’t allow yourself to be imprisoned by any affection. Preserve your solitude. If the day ever comes when a real friendship is bestowed on you there will be no conflict between your inner solitude and this friendship. On the contrary, that is the infallible sign by which you will know it. Other affections ought to be severely disciplined. In any case, there is only one serious weakness that you have to master, only a single one, but at the risk of dying without ever having lived . . .] (First and Last Notebooks)

The secret of the human condition is that equilibrium between man and the surrounding forces of nature “which infinitely surpass him” cannot be achieved by inaction; it is only achieved in the action by which man recreates his own life: that is to say, by work. (First and Last Notebooks)