14 Quotes by Étienne Gilson

Humans feel at home in a world of things, whose essences and laws it can grasp and define in terms of concepts; but shy and ill at ease in a world of existences, because to exist is an act, not a thing.

Man is not a mind that thinks, but a being who knows other beings as true, who loves them as good and who enjoys them as beautiful. For all that which is, down to the humblest form of existence, exhibits the inseparable privileges of being, which are truth, goodness, and beauty.

Faith comes to intelligence as a light that overflows it with joy and inspires it with a certitude that does away with question.

To minds tormented by the divine thirst, it is useless to offer the most certain knowledge of the laws of numbers and the arrangement of the universe.

If our previous analyses are correct, they all point to the same conclusion, that metaphysical adventures are doomed to fail when their authors substitute the fundamental concepts of any particular science for those of metaphysics.