Georges Bernanos Quotes (28 Quotes)

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

The world is eaten up by boredom. . . . It is like dust. You go about and never notice, you breathe it in . . . . 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.

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.

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

Hell is not to love anymore.

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

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.

Hope is a risk that must be run.

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

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

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 defin

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

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

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

No one ever discovers the depths of his own loneliness.

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.

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

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.

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!

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

Hell, madam, is to love no longer.

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.

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.

The wish to pray is a prayer in itself. God can ask no more than that of us.

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.

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

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