Georges Bernanos

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

— 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…

— Georges Bernanos

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

— Georges Bernanos

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

— Georges Bernanos

Optimism has always seemed to me the cunning alibi of egoists, anxious to cover up their state of chronic self-satisfaction. They are…

— Georges Bernanos

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

— Georges Bernanos

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

— Georges Bernanos

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

— Georges Bernanos

“There remains the unforseen. And the unforseen is never negligible. ”

— Georges Bernanos

The world is eaten up by boredom. You can't see it all at once. It is like dust. You go about and…

— Georges Bernanos

“Our habits are our friends. Even our bad habits.”

— Georges Bernanos

Have you never been moved by poor men's fidelity, the image of you they form in their simple minds? Why should you…

— Georges Bernanos

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

— Georges Bernanos

Hell, madam, is to love no longer.

— Georges Bernanos

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

— Georges Bernanos

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

— Georges Bernanos

Lust is a mysterious wound in the side of humanity; or rather, at the very source of its life! To confound this…

— Georges Bernanos

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

— Georges Bernanos

First of all, be what you are.

— Georges Bernanos

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

— Georges Bernanos

Truth is meant to save you first. The comfort comes afterward.

— Georges Bernanos

“And now she was thinking of her own death, with her heart gripped not by fear but by the excitement of a…

— Georges Bernanos

“It is one of the most mysterious penalties of men that they should be forced to confide the most precious of their…

— Georges Bernanos

More often than not, nothingness is reluctantly and despairingly taken to be the only hypothesis possible when all the others have failed,…

— Georges Bernanos

Like all truly pure souls she [Chantal] quickly resigned herself to past faults, thought only of how to repair whatever harm they…

— Georges Bernanos