Georges Bernanos Quotes

42 quotes in 690 categories

• It's a fine thing to rise above pride, but you must have pride in order to do so.
• Little things seem nothing, but they give peace, like those meadow flowers which individually seem odorless but all together perfume the air.
• The first sign of corruption in a society that is still alive is that the end justifies the means.
• A poor man with nothing in his belly needs hope, illusion, more than bread.
• Civilization exists precisely so that there may be no masses but rather men alert enough never to constitute masses.
• 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…
• No one ever discovers the depths of his own loneliness.
• 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.
• 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…
• To be able to share in another's joy, that is the secret of happiness.
• Justice in the hands of the powerful is merely a governing system like any other. Why call it justice? Let us rather call it injustice,…
• 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.
• 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…
• 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…
• 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…
• 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…
• 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…
• God ordains that beggars should beg for greatness, as for all else, when greatness shines out of them, and they don't know it.
• 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…

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