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.
—Georges Bernanos
Topics: Youth
And what have you laymen made of hell? A kind of penal servitude for eternity, on the lines of your convict prisons on earth, to which you condemn in advance all the wretched felons your police have hunted from the beginning—“enemies of society,” as you call them. You’re kind enough to include the blasphemers and the profane. What proud or reasonable man could stomach such a notion of God’s justice? And when you find that notion inconvenient it’s easy enough for you to put it on one side. Hell is not to love any more, Madame. Not to love any more!
—Georges Bernanos
Topics: Hell
The world is eaten up by boredom. You can’t see it all at once. It is like dust. You go about and never notice, you breathe it in, you eat and drink it. It is sifted so fine, it doesn’t even grit on your teeth. But stand still for an instant and there it is, coating your face and hands. To shake off this drizzle of ashes you must be for ever on the go. And so people are always “on the go.”
—Georges Bernanos
Topics: Boredom
Who are you to condemn another’s sin?. He who condemns sin becomes part of it, espouses it.
—Georges Bernanos
Topics: Sin
Hope is a risk that must be run.
—Georges Bernanos
Topics: Hope
Have you never been moved by poor men’s fidelity, the image of you they form in their simple minds? Why should you always talk of their envy, without understanding that what they ask of you is not so much your worldly goods, as something very hard to define, which they themselves can put no name to; yet at times it consoles their loneliness; a dream of splendor, of magnificence, a tawdry dream, a poor man’s dream—and yet God blesses it!
—Georges Bernanos
Topics: Wealth, Riches
Fact is Our Lord knew all about the power of money: He gave capitalism a tiny niche in His scheme of things, He gave it a chance, He even provided a first installment of funds. Can you beat that? It’s so magnificent. God despises nothing. After all, if the deal had come off, Judas would probably have endowed sanatoriums, hospitals, public libraries or laboratories.
—Georges Bernanos
Topics: Capitalism
I know the compassion of others is a relief at first. I don’t despise it. But it can’t quench pain, it slips through your soul as through a sieve. And when our suffering has been dragged from one pity to another, as from one mouth to another, we can no longer respect or love it.
—Georges Bernanos
Topics: Kindness, Compassion
Faith is not a thing which one “loses,” we merely cease to shape our lives by it.
—Georges Bernanos
Topics: Faith
A poor man with nothing in his belly needs hope, illusion, more than bread.
—Georges Bernanos
Topics: The Poor, Illusion, Poverty
The first sign of corruption in a society that is still alive is that the end justifies the means.
—Georges Bernanos
Topics: Corruption
Purity is not imposed upon us as though it were a kind of punishment, it is one of those mysterious but obvious conditions of that supernatural knowledge of ourselves in the Divine, which we speak of as faith. Impurity does not destroy this knowledge, it slays our need for it.
—Georges Bernanos
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.
—Georges Bernanos
Topics: Getting Going, Thinking, Thought, Action, Inaction, Procrastination, Thoughts
What does the truth matter? Haven’t we mothers all given our sons a taste for lies, lies which from the cradle upwards lull them, reassure them, send them to sleep: lies as soft and warm as a breast!
—Georges Bernanos
Topics: Deception/Lying, Lies, Lying
It is the perpetual dread of fear, the fear of fear, that shapes the face of a brave man.
—Georges Bernanos
Topics: Bravery, Courage
Civilization exists precisely so that there may be no masses but rather men alert enough never to constitute masses.
—Georges Bernanos
Our rages, daughters of despair, creep and squirm like worms. Prayer is the only form of revolt which remains upright.
—Georges Bernanos
Topics: Prayer
No one ever discovers the depths of his own loneliness.
—Georges Bernanos
Topics: Loneliness
The wish to pray is a prayer in itself. God can ask no more than that of us.
—Georges Bernanos
Topics: Prayer
The modern state no longer has anything but rights; it does not recognize duties any more.
—Georges Bernanos
God ordains that beggars should beg for greatness, as for all else, when greatness shines out of them, and they don’t know it.
—Georges Bernanos
Topics: Charity
It’s a fine thing to rise above pride, but you must have pride in order to do so.
—Georges Bernanos
Topics: Pride
A thought that does not result in action is nothing much, and an action that does not proceed from a thought is nothing at all.
—Georges Bernanos
Topics: Action
When you think of the huge uninterrupted success of a book like Don Quixote, you’re bound to realize that if humankind have not yet finished being revenged, by sheer laughter, for being let down in their greatest hope, it is because that hope was cherished so long and lay so deep!
—Georges Bernanos
Topics: Belief
Fear, true fear, is a savage frenzy. Of all the insanities of which we are capable, it is surely the most cruel.
—Georges Bernanos
Topics: Fear
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- Albert Camus Algerian-born French Philosopher
- Simone de Beauvoir French Philosopher
- Jean-Paul Sartre French Philosopher
- Andre Gide French Novelist
- Marcel Proust French Novelist
- Michel de Montaigne French Essayist
- Jean Cocteau French Poet, Artist
- Charles de Gaulle French General, Statesman
- Maurice Chevalier French Actor
- Marie Curie Polish-born French Physicist
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