Georges Bernanos Quotes

A poor man with nothing in his belly needs hope, illusion, more than bread.

It's a fine thing to rise above pride, but you must have pride in order to do so.

The first sign of corruption in a society that is still alive is that the end justifies the means.

Little things seem nothing, but they give peace, like those meadow flowers which individually seem odorless but all together perfume the air.

Hope is a risk that must be run.

Suicide only really frightens those who are never tempted by it and never will be, for its darkness only welcomes those who are predestined to it.

Faith is not a thing which one loses, we merely cease to shape our lives by it.

...the most dangerous shortsightedness consists in underestimating the mediocre.

You owe it to everyone you love to find pockets of tranquility in your busy world.

Civilization exists precisely so that there may be no masses but rather men alert enough never to constitute masses.

What a cunning mixture of sentiment, pity, tenderness, irony surrounds adolescence, what knowing watchfulness! Young birds on their first flight are hardly so hovered around.

The wish to pray is a prayer in itself.

Who are you to condemn another's sin? He who condemns sin becomes part of it, espouses it.

The modern state no longer has anything but rights; it does not recognize duties any more.

The devil, you see, is that friend who never stays with us to the end.

No one ever discovers the depths of his own loneliness.

God ordains that beggars should beg for greatness, as for all else, when greatness shines out of them, and they don't know it.

Optimism approves of everything, submits to everything, believes everything; it is the virtue above all of the taxpayer.

Hell, madame, is to love no longer.

It is the perpetual dread of fear, the fear of fear, that shapes the face of a brave man.

A man given to vice is always an idealist.

I can now see to the bottom of my own depths, there is nothing stopping my gaze, no obstacle is in the way. And there is nothing there.

[A] good Christian does not care for miracles very much, because a miracle is God looking after His own affairs, and we prefer looking after them for Him.

A thought which does not result in an action is nothing much, and an action which does not proceed from a thought is nothing at all.

Justice in the hands of the powerful is merely a governing system like any other. Why call it justice?

God knows that we should not despise anything. We must do our best.

I don't think we can ever learn much from ultra-sensitive, shifty faces, skilled in disguise, that hide themselves in lust, as beasts hide to die.

God! how is it that we fail to recognize that the mask of pleasure, stripped of all hypocrisy, is that of anguish?

There is nothing that God hates so much as a liar.

To be able to share in another's joy, that is the secret of happiness.

All her life she [Chantal] had been carefully, heroically watching over mediocre beings who were hardly real, over things of no value.

Le de s ir de la prie' re est de j a' une prie' re. The wish for prayer is already a prayer.

Fear, true fear, is a savage frenzy. Of all the insanities of which we are capable, it is surely the cruelest. There is naught to equal its drive, and naught can survive its thrust.

Money-crimes have an abstract quality. History is laden with the victims of gold, but their remains are odourless.

Only the present counts.

What does it matter, all is grace.

The most dangerous of our calculations are those we call illusions.

Our rages, daughters of despair, creep and squirm like worms. Prayer is the only form of revolt which remains upright.

I have just discovered something I have always known: we can no more escape from one another than we can escape from God.

Hell is not to love anymore.

Appearances are nothing.... And first of all they should not be feared, they are only dangerous to the weak.

First of all, be what you are.

[T]he cradle is shallower than the grave.

I have done no passably decent job in this world which did not at first seem to me useless - absurdly useless, useless to the point of nausea. My secret demon is called:;: What's the use?

Rather than the obsession with impurity, you'd do better to fear the nostalgia for purity.

Truth is meant to save you first, and the comfort comes afterwards.

Faith is not a thing which one 'loses', we merely cease to shape our lives by it.

Hell, madam, is to love no longer.

Our rages daughters of despair creep and squirm like worms. Prayer is the only form of revolt which remains upright.

Hell madame is to love no longer.