Americans seem sometimes to believe that if you are a thinker you must be a frowning bore, because thinking is so damn serious.

- Jacques Maritain

We don't love qualities; we love a person; sometimes by reason of their defects as well as their qualities.

- Jacques Maritain

Gratitude is the most exquisite form of courtesy.

- Jacques Maritain

Christianity taught men that love is worth more than intelligence.

- Jacques Maritain

A man of courage flees forward, in the midst of new things.

- Jacques Maritain

A single idea, if it is right, saves us the labor of an infinity of experiences.

- Jacques Maritain

Poetry proceeds from the totality of man, sense, imagination, intellect, love, desire, instinct, blood and spirit together.

- Jacques Maritain

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.

- Jacques Maritain

The great and admirable strength of America consists in this, that America is truly the American people.

- Jacques Maritain

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.

- Jacques Maritain