Georges Bernanos Quotes

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.

The wish to pray is a prayer in itself.

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.

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

It is one of the most mysterious penalties of men that they should be forced to confide the most precious of their possessions to things so unstable and ever changing, alas, as words.

But I shall give less thought to the future, I shall work in the present. I feel such work is within my power. For I only succeed in small things, and when I am tried by anxiety, I am bound to say it is the small joys that release me.

When writing of oneself one should show no mercy. Yet why at the first attempt to discover one's own truth does all inner strength seem to melt away in floods of self-pity and tenderness and rising tears...

On ne comprends rien à la civilisation moderne, si l'on n'admet pas d'abord qu'elle est une conspiration universelle contre toute espèce de vie intérieure.

Our habits are our friends. Even our bad habits.

Do you think chance is really just the logic of God?

Il faut beaucoup de prodigues pour faire un peuple généreux, beaucoup d'indisciplinés pour faire un peuple libre, et beaucoup de jeunes fous pour faire un peuple héroïque

How easy it is to hate oneself! True grace is to forget. Yet if pride could die in us, the supreme grace would be to love oneself in all simplicity—as one would love any one of those who themselves have suffered and loved in Christ.

Void fascinates those who daren't look into it. They throw themselves in, for fear of falling.

The horrors that we have seen, the still greater horrors we shall presently see, are not signs that rebels, insubordinate, untamable men are increasing in number throughout the world, but rather that there is a constant increase in the number of obedient, docile men. —George Bernanos

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

I have no ambition to change my nature, I merely intend to conquer my dislikes.

Satan is too hard a master. He would never command as did the Other with divine simplicity: 'Do likewise.' The devil will have no victims resemble him. He permits only a rough caricature, impotent, abject, which has to serve as food for eternal irony, the mordant irony of the depths.

Hope is despair, overcome.

And now she was thinking of her own death, with her heart gripped not by fear but by the excitement of a great discovery, the feeling that she was about to learn what she had been unable to learn from her brief experience of love. What she thought about death was childish, but what could never have touched her in the past now filled her with poignant tenderness, as sometimes a familiar face we see suddenly with the eyes of love makes us aware that it has been dearer to us than life itself for longer than we have ever realized.

We pay a heavy, very heavy price for the superhuman dignity of our calling. The ridiculous is always so near to the sublime. And the world, usually so indulgent to foibles, hates ours instinctively.

Je crois, je suis sûr que beaucoup d’hommes n’engagent jamais leur être, leur sincérité profonde. Ils vivent à la surface d’eux-mêmes, et le sol humain est si riche que cette mince couche superficielle suffit pour une maigre moisson, qui donne l’illusion d’une véritable destinée.

Tiens, une ville qu'on traverse la nuit, et tout à coup tu dépasses la dernière maison, tu retombes dans le silence, comme dans le vide.

On ne comprend absolument rien à la civilisation moderne si l'on n'admet pas tout d'abord qu'elle est une conspiration universelle contre toute espèce de vie intérieure.

O miracle—thus to be able to give [peace] we ourselves do not possess, sweet miracle of our empty hands!

Lust is a mysterious wound in the side of humanity; or rather, at the very source of its life! To confound this lust in man with that desire which unites the sexes is like confusing a tumor with the very organ which it devours, a tumor whose very deformity horribly reproduces the shape.

I believe, in fact I am certain, that many men never give out the whole of themselves, their deepest truth. They live on the surface, and yet, so rich is the soil of humanity that even this thin outer layer is able to yield a kind of meager harvest which gives the illusion of real living.

Ô maudite enfance, qui ne veut pas mourir !

Nothing but a little savage...

Those who still profess the rule of hope, teach optimism only by force of habit, without believing in what they say.

The work God carries out in us,' he said after a short pause, 'is not often what we expect. A great deal of the time the Holy Spirit seems to be working backward in us and wasting time. If a lump of iron could form an idea of the file that's slowly rough-shaping it, how furious it would be! Yet that's how God shapes us. Certain saints' lives seem horribly monotonous and desolate.

For those who have the habit of prayer, thought is too often a mere alibi, a sly way of deciding to do what one wants to do. Reason will always obscure what we wish to keep in the shadows. A worldling can think out the pros and cons and sum up his chances. No doubt. But what are our chances worth? We who have admitted once and for all into each moment of our puny lives the terrifying presence of God?...What is the use of working out chances? There are no chances against God.

Ihave thought for a long time now that if, some day, the increasing efficiency for the technique of destruction finally causes our species to disappear from the earth, it will not be cruelty that will be responsible for our extinction and still less, of course, the indignation that cruelty awakens and the reprisals and vengeance that it brings upon itself … but the docility, the lack of responsibility of the modern man, his base subservient acceptance of every common decree. The horrors that we have seen, the still greater horrors we shall presently see, are not signs that rebels, insubordinate, untamable men are increasing in number throughout the world, but rather that there is a constant increase in the number of obedient, docile men. —George Bernanos

My parish is bored stiff; no other word for it.  Like so many others! We can see them being eaten up by boredom, and we can’t do anything about it.  Someday perhaps we shall catch it ourselves—become aware of the cancerous growth within us.  You can keep going a long time with that in you.

Qu'est-ce que cela fait? Tout est grâce.

Nowadays the seminaries turn out little choirboys, little ragamuffins who think they’re working harder than anybody because they never get anything done.

Je n'ai jamais été jeune, parce que personne n'a voulu l'être avec moi.

S'il n'y avait que des salauds dans le monde, le Réalisme serait aussi le Bon Sens, car le Réalisme est précisément le bon sens des salauds.

I realize now that friendship can break out between two people, with that sudden violence which is only attributed to the revelation of love.

Even from the Cross, when Our Lord in His agony found the perfection of His Sacred Humanity—even then He did not own Himself a victim of injustice: They know not what they do.

A Christian people doesn't mean a lot of goody-goodies. The Church has plenty of stamina, and isn't afraid of sin. On the contrary, she can look it in the face calmly and even take it upon herself, assume it at times, as Our Lord did. When a good workman's been at it for a whole week, surely he's due for a booze on Saturday night. Look: I'll define you a Christian people by the opposite. The opposite of a Christian people is a people grown sad and old. You'll be saying that isn't a very theological definition. I agree... Why does our earliest childhood always seem so soft and full of light? A kid's got plenty of troubles, like everybody else, and he's really so very helpless, quite unarmed against pain and illness. Childhood and old age should be the two greatest trials of mankind. But that very sense of powerlessness is the mainspring of a child's joy. He just leaves it all to his mother, you see. Present, past, future -- his whole life is caught up in one look, and that look is a smile. Well, lad, if only they'd let us have our way, the Church might have given men that supreme comfort. Of course they'd each have their own worries to grapple with, just the same. Hunger, thirst, poverty, jealousy -- we'd never be able to pocket the devil once and for all, you may be sure. But man would have known he was the son of God; and therein lies your miracle. He'd have lived, he'd have died with that idea in his noddle -- and not just a notion picked up in books either -- oh, no! Because we'd have made that idea the basis of everything: habits and customs, relaxation and pleasure, down to the very simplest needs. That wouldn't have stopped the labourer ploughing, or the scientist swotting at his logarithms, or even the engineer making his playthings for grown-up people. What we would have got rid of, what we would have torn from the very heart of Adam, is that sense of his own loneliness... God has entrusted the Church to keep [the soul of childhood] alive, to safeguard our candour and freshness... Joy is the gift of the Church, whatever joy is possible for this sad world to share... What would it profit you even to create life itself, when you have lost all sense of what life really is?

Le danger n'est pas dans la multiplication des machines, mais dans le nombre sans cesse croissant d'hommes habitués, dès leur enfance, à ne désirer que ce que les machines peuvent donner.

The expression 'to lose one's faith', as one might a purse or a ring of keys, has always seemed to me rather foolish. It must be one of those sayings of bourgeois piety, a legacy of those wretched priests of the eighteenth century who talked so much. Faith is not a thing which one 'loses', we merely cease to shape our lives by it. That is why old-fashioned confessors are not far wrong in showing a certain amount of scepticism when dealing with 'intellectual crises', doubtless far more rare than people imagine. An educated man may come by degrees to tuck away his faith in some back corner of his brain, where he can find it again on reflection, by an effort of memory: yet even if he feels a tender regret for what no longer exists and might have been, the term 'faith' would nevertheless be inapplicable to such an abstraction, no more like real faith, to use a very well-worn simile, than the constellation of Cygne is like a swan.

When writing of oneself one should show no mercy.  Yet why at the first attempt to discover one’s own truth does all inner strength seem to melt away in floods of self-pity and tenderness and rising tears...

The shabbiest tuppeny doll will rejoice a baby’s heart for half the year, but your mature gentleman will go yawning his head off at a five-hundred-franc gadget. And why? Because he has lost the soul of childhood.

Well, as I was saying, the world is eaten up by boredom. To perceive this needs a little preliminary thought: 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 forever on the go. And so, people are always “on the go.

Oh! Je sais bien que la compassion d'autrui soulage un moment, je ne la méprise point. Mais elle ne désalèere pas, elle s'écoule dans l'âme comme a travers un crible. Et quand notre souffrance passe de pitié en pitié, ainsi que de bouche en bouche, il me semble que nous ne pouvons plus la respecter, ni l'aimer...

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 forever on the go.  And so people are always ‘on the go’.

Mine is a parish like all the rest.  They’re all alike.  Those of to-day I mean.  I was saying so only yesterday to M. le Curé de Norenfontes—that good and evil are probably evenly distributed, but on such a low plane, very low Indeed! Or if you like they lie one over the other; like oil and water they never mix.  M. le Curé only laughed at me.

Appartenir à une patrie, c'est aussi s'engager pour le siècle où l'on y vit" (source: émission sur la Russie sur Arte le 28/02/2012). "L'honneur d'un peuple appartient aux morts et les vivants n'en ont que l'usufruit - Georges Bernanos - Nos démocraties ne valent que par les hommes qui les servent. Elles ne sont donc jamais parfaites mais elles reposent sur un socle inamovible , selon Gandhi : “La véritable source des droits est le devoir.” Tout le reste est une question d’organisation. "Le passé renforce le présent et les pas hésitants qui conduisent à ce présent trouvent le chemin de l'avenir..." "TELL ME WHO YOUR FRIENDS ARE AND I WILL TELL YOU HOW YOU ARE" Pour juger de la beauté d'un ouvrage, il suffit de le considérer en lui-même ; mais, pour juger du mérite de l'auteur, il faut le comparer à son siècle FONTENELLE ------------------------------------------- "La quantité de critiques reçues concernant tout sujet est inversement proportionnelle à la valeur exacte du sujet". (Louis de Potter, 1850)

This face, however, had something fraternal and friendly about it. Suddenly it had become as familiar as her own. All the pleasure in looking at it came not from him, but from the depths of herself, where it had lain hidden and germinating, like a seed of wheat beneath the snow. Nothing could alter its power and sweetness, and it depended neither on time nor on place. If it were pushed aside, it would recur again, following a rhythm as natural and regular as that of sleep or hunger. She had, no doubt, occasionally thought of love, but in order to overcome an uncontrollable physical revulsion she had had to force herself to imagine beings as different as possible from those around her, and her imagination was soon defeated.

The usual notion of prayer is so absurd. How can those who know nothing about it, who pray little or not at all, dare speak so frivolously of prayer? A Carthusian, a Trappist will work for years to make of himself a man of prayer, and then any fool who comes along sets himself up as judge of this lifelong effort. If it were really what they suppose, a kind of chatter, the dialogue of a madman with his shadow, or even less—a vain and superstitious sort of petition to be given the good things of this world, how could innumerable people find until their dying day, I won't even say such great 'comfort'—since they put no faith in the solace of the senses—but sheer, robust, vigorous, abundant joy in prayer? Oh, of course—suggestion, say the scientists. Certainly they can never have known old monks, wise, shrewd, unerring in judgement, and yet aglow with passionate insight, so very tender in their humanity. What miracle enables these semi-lunatics, these prisoners of their own dreams, these sleepwalkers, apparently to enter more deeply each day into the pain of others? An odd sort of dream, an unusual opiate which, far from turning him back into himself and isolating him from his fellows, unites the individual with mankind in the spirit of universal charity! This seems a very daring comparison. I apologise for having advanced it, yet perhaps it might satisfy many people who find it hard to think for themselves, unless the thought has first been jolted by some unexpected, surprising image. Could a sane man set himself up as a judge of music because he has sometimes touched a keyboard with the tips of his fingers? And surely if a Bach fugue, a Beethoven symphony leave him cold, if he has to content himself with watching on the face of another listener the reflected pleasure of supreme, inaccessible delight, such a man has only himself to blame. But alas! We take the psychiatrists' word for it. The unanimous testimony of saints is held as of little or no account. They may all affirm that this kind of deepening of the spirit is unlike any other experience, that instead of showing us more and more of our own complexity it ends in sudden total illumination, opening out upon azure light—they can be dismissed with a few shrugs. Yet when has any man of prayer told us that prayer had failed him?

Да откриваш радост в чуждата радост: това е ключът към щастието.

Le mensonge n'a jamais paru répréhensible à Mouchette, car mentir est le plus précieux, et sans doute l'unique privilège des misérables.

Мир втікає у війну, щоб утекти від неменшого випробування, що стало для нього нестерпним, утекти від миру, від випробування миром. За взаємною згодою ніхто ніколи не мав наміру говорити про мир, або ж цей мир мав інше ім'я, його називали передихом. Мир - це великий труд, здійснюваний великим народом, що нав'язується йому від імені великої віри. Аби нині знайти в собі мужність і відважитися на такий труд, щоб піти назустріч величезним небезпекам, необхідно не тільки, щоби народ повірив у свої сили, а й щоб він повірив у значущість тих благ, які мир повинен оберігати. Завжди є немало причин померти, добрих чи поганих, легко померти від бездіяльності, із відчаю, але щоб жити, необхідно багато сталості й любові.

Jurei emocionar-vos, de amizade ou de cólera, tanto faz. Era assim que eu falava outrora no tempo da Grand Peur. Presentemente já me preocupa pouco emocionar, pelo menos de cólera. A cólera dos imbecis sempre me encheu de tristeza, hoje causar-me-ia pavor. O mundo inteiro ressoa com essa cólera. Que quereis? Eles não pediam mais do que não compreender nada e mesmo para isso tinham que se juntar vários" Why the light to the nations is so dim? Unfortunately for you, beyond a certain degree of deception, the most insolent phraseologies cannot mask the void of systems: the agnostic warns you about the conditions in the world for the hour shall strike when questions hurled at you from all points on earth shall be so urgent and so direct that you will not be able to answer except yes or no.

It was a time when the Catholic writer Georges Bernanos, no fanatic as such, could glorify France’s archanti-Semite of the late nineteenth century, Edouard Drumont, the notorious editor of La Libre Parole and author of La France Juive, and lash out at the Jewish threat to Christian civilization.

But people talk too much. They talk and talk so much that when the time comes there’s nothing left in their words. They’re like the dust you raise when you’re winnowing grain.

What I am about to record would not reveal much to the only friend with whom I still manage to speak openly, and besides I know I could never bring myself to put on paper the things which almost every morning I confide to God without any shame.

But what would it profit you even to create life itself, when you have lost all sense of what life really is? Might as well blow your brains out among your test-tubes. Manufacture ‘life’ as much as you like, I say! It’s the vision you give us of death that poisons the thoughts of poor devils, bit by bit, that gradually clouds and dulls their last happiness. You’ll be able to keep it up so long as your industries and capital permit you to turn the world into a fair ground of mechanical roundabouts, twirling madly in a perpetual din of brass and crackling fireworks. But just you wait. Wait for the first quarter-of-an-hour’s silence. Then the Word will be heard of men—not the voice they rejected, which spoke so quietly: ‘I am the Way, the Resurrection and the Life,’ but the voice from the depths: ‘I am the door forever locked, the road which leads nowhere, the lie, the everlasting dark’.

But thoughts which have stirred our hearts too deeply are always in some way troubled and confused.

True pain coming out of a man belongs primarily to God, it seems to me. I try and take it humbly to my heart, just as it is. And I endeavour to make it mine, to love it. I can understand all the hidden meaning of the expression which has become hackneyed now: to commune with, Because I really “commune” with his pain.

Am I where Our Lord would have me be? Twenty times a day I ask this question. For the Master whom we serve not only judges our life but shares it, takes it upon Himself. It would be far easier to satisfy a geometrical and moralistic God.

Notre vie est déjà pleine de morts, et pour chacun le plus mort des morts est le petit garçon qu'il fut. Et pourtant l'heure venue, c'est lui qui reprendra sa place à la tête de ma vie, rassemblera mes pauvres années jusqu'à la dernière, et comme un jeune chef ses vétérans, ralliant la troupe en désordre entrera le premier dans la maison du Père.

Men like us — up to a point — we're more careful when we're drunk. But once we get past that point, we don't give a damn.

Of course, thoughts never passed through Mouchette's head in such a logical way. She was vague and jumped quickly from one thing to another. If the very poor could associate the various images of their poverty they would be overwhelmed by it, but their wretchedness seems to them to consist simply of an endless succession of miseries, a series of unfortunate chances. They are like blind men who with trembling fingers count out the coins whose value they cannot calculate. For the poor, the idea of poverty is enough. Their poverty is faceless. Now that she had abandoned the struggle Mouchette returned to her instinctive, unconscious, animal-like resignation. As she had never been ill, the cold which chilled her was scarcely a suffering, but rather a discomfort like so many others. It was not threatening, and did not suggest death. In any case, Mouchette thought of death as something as strange and unlikely as winning a big prize in the lottery. At her age, dying and becoming a lady were equally fantastic adventures.

She dared not ask Arsène to go more slowly for she had all the docility of the peasant woman, that docility which allows them to scold and insult the drunkard but nevertheless makes them trot at his side, adjusting their step to his.

The brutality of his voice reassured Mouchette more than any word of friendship would. She could only defend herself by immobility and silence.

Mouchette's experience told her that Arsène was drunk, even if in a different way from her father. No one had seen him tottering along the road or lurching against a wall, like a wounded animal seeking its lair. He despised such people, calling them yokels, clods who couldn't take their drink, boasting because they had too much. He was proud of the fact that he was not a local man, nor was he from Boulogne, born of a Breton mother and an unknown father. Usually alcohol made him quiet, but sometimes, like tonight, he would talk in an even, quiet voice with a strange light in his eyes, and when he started off on his sea stories (he had once been a sailor) it was better not to laugh. Then he would start to strut — an infallible sign of his anger, which everyone feared because of its strangeness and its difference from their own.

You've not got much to say for yourself, but that's a nice change in a girl.

All the beatings she had suffered had not subjugated her, only taught her prudence and a calm and sly scorn for men's anger.

hunger now seemed a prolongation of physical well-being, a delicious drowsiness.

For years Mouchette had felt herself a stranger amongst hte villagers, dark and hairy like goats, whom she hated so much. Even while they were still young they ran to unhealthy fat. Their nerves were poisoned by the coffee they drank all day in their stinking cafés, and it finally started to colour their skin. She was not aware of despising anyone because, in her innocence, this seemed outside of her capabilities and she thought no more of it than she did of the other more material characteristics which the rich and the powerful reserve for themselves. Indeed, she would have been amazed if anyone told her that she despised Madame. She simply saw herself as a rebel against an order which the schoolmistress typified. When Madame told her from time to time that she was no good, she never contradicted her. She was no more ashamed of that than she was of her rags. For a long time she had delighted in a savage indifference to the disdainful comments of the other girls and the mockery of the boys. Often on a Sunday morning, when her mother sent her to the village for the week's bacon, she deliberately let herself get muddy on the road and reached the square just as people were coming out of Mass. And yet, suddenly, something had happened. . . . He blew on the coal for a few moments longer and then dropped it at his feet. Their eyes met. She would have liked him to understand her feelings, of which she was at the moment only aware of the shock, like the sting of raw spirits on her palate. She could give no name to that shock. What had it in common with what people called love and the actions she had seen? All she could do was to shine the light steadily on his wounded hand.

He stopped suddenly, put his hand to his throat for a few minutes with his features fixed in a kind of stupid, hopeless searching look. Then his face brightened a little in spite of the anguish which he had doubtlessly forgotten.

Les ratés ne vous rateront pas.

Of course, nobody’s asking you to modify your principles in any way, and in no diocese, as far as I know, has the fourth commandment been tampered with. But can we go poking our noses into their ledgers? They may be more or less amenable to our teaching as far as, for instance, the errors of the flesh are concerned—in their worldly prudence they can see where such disorders lead: they consider they’re wasteful, though usually in no higher sense than as a risk, as money thrown away; but what they call ‘business’ appears to these industrious folk their special preserve, where hard work excuses everything, since to them work is a kind of religion. ‘Each for himself and the devil take the hindmost,’ is their rule of life. And we are helpless, it will take years, centuries maybe, to enlighten their minds, rid them of the feeling that business is in the nature of ‘war’, with all the rights and privileges of real war. A soldier on the battlefield does not consider himself a murderer. Nor does a businessman who draws excessive profit from his activities consider himself a thief, since he knows he can never bring himself to take sixpence from another man’s pocket. Men are men, my dear boy, what else do you expect? If some of these businessmen were ever to take it into their heads to follow strict theological precepts on the subject of lawful profit, they would certainly end up in the bankruptcy court. And is it wise to class as inferior, industrious citizens who have struggled so hard to rise socially, and constitute our strongest support in a materialistic world, who take their share of the burden of church expenses, and who—now that in the villages vocations have almost ceased—even give us priests? Big business exists only in name today, it has been absorbed by the banks, the aristocracy is dying out, the proletarian slips through our fingers, and yet you’d like to get the middle classes to provide an immediate and spectacular solution to ethical difficulties which need endless time, prudence and tact to unravel. Was not slavery an even more flagrant breach of God’s law? And yet the Apostles—At your age we like to be intolerant. Be on your guard against that fault. Don’t think in abstractions, see men as they are.

Oh, everybody knows that although they may be hard workers, they are not easy to deal with, and they’ve skimmed the district for all the cream they can get. But after all, though they may rob us, at least they respect us. That makes for a kind of social solidarity between us and them—deplore it or not, it exists, and everything that exists should be used for some good purpose.

Vice is perhaps less dangerous to us than a certain staleness. There is softening of the brain. Softening of the heart is worse.

We priests are sneered at and always shall be—the accusation is such an easy one—as deeply envious, hypocritical haters of virility. Yet whosoever has experienced sin must know that lust, with its parasitic growth, is for ever threatening to stifle virility as well as intelligence. Impotent to create, it can only contaminate in the germ the frail promise of humanity; it is probably at the very source, the primal cause of all human blemishes; and when amid the windings of this huge jungle whose paths are unknown, we encounter Lust, just as she is, as she emerged forth from the hands of the Master of Prodigies, the cry from our hearts is not only terror but imprecation: 'You, you alone have set death loose upon the world!

Teaching is no joke, sonny! ... Comforting truths, they call it! Truth is meant to save you first, and the comfort comes afterwards. Besides, you've no right to call that sort of thing comfort. Might as well talk about condolences! The Word of God is a red-hot iron. And you who preach it 'ud go picking it up with a pair of tongs, for fear of burning yourself, you daren't get hold of it with both hands. It's too funny! Why, the priest who descends from the pulpit of Truth, with a mouth like a hen's vent, a little hot but pleased with himself, he's not been preaching: at best he's been purring like a tabby-cat. Mind you that can happen to us all, we're all half asleep, it's the devil to wake us up, sometimes — the apostles slept all right at Gethsemane. Still, there's a difference... And mind you many a fellow who waves his arms and sweats like a furniture-remover isn't necessarily any more awakened than the rest. On the contrary. I simply mean that when the Lord has drawn from me some word for the good of souls, I know, because of the pain of it.

His face frankly displays his suffering, expressing it with a truly royal simplicity. At such moments even the very best people are apt to give themselves away with the kind of look which says to you more or less directly: 'You see how I'm sticking it out; don't praise me, it's my nature; thanks all the same.' But the Curé de Torcy looks straight at you, guilelessly. His eyes beg your compassion and sympathy. But with what nobility they beg! A king might beg in just that way.

You understand absolutely nothing about modern civilization unless you first admit that it is a universal conspiracy against all interior life.

What is the use of working out chances? There are no chances against God.

Fear, true fear, is a savage frenzy. Of all the insanities of which we are capable it is surely the most cruel.

No se puede decir más que con espanto el número de hombres que nacen, viven y mueren sin haber usado ni una sola vez su alma

Rzeczy drobne wydają się nieistotne, ale to one zapewniają nam spokój.

When I was your age we had men in the church—don’t frown, it makes me want to clout you—men I say—make what you like of the word-heads of a parish, masters, my boy, rulers.  They could hold a whole country together, that sort could—with a mere lift of the chin.  Oh, I know what you’re going to say: they fed well, drank good wine and didn’t object to a game of cards.  Well, what of it?

Well, they will keep on saying: ‘Why worry?’ But what else are we here for, in heaven’s name?

you find them wreathed in knowing deprecating smiles; they beg you to spare them.

After all, to cultivate clever people is merely a way of dining out, and a priest has no right to go out to dinner in a world full of starving people.

For those who have the habit of prayer, thought is too often a mere alibi, a sly way of deciding to do what one wants to do.  Reason will always obscure what we wish to keep in the shadows.

Le sacrifice de l'Homme à l'Humanité, de l'Humanité au Progrès, pour aboutir ridiculement au sacrifice du progrès lui-même à la dictature de l'Économique, tel fut le crime auquel restera toujours attaché le mot de la Démocratie, forme bourgeoise de la Révolution.

Il ne s’agit pas d’édifier à grand-peine des institutions libérales, il s’agit d’avoir encore des hommes libres à mettre dedans.

Tous les dictateurs, à toutes les époques de l’Histoire, ont invoqué la justice sociale, c’est toujours au nom de l’égalité qu’on a étranglé la Liberté, il ne peut y avoir d’égalité que sous un maître absolu.

Chi cerca la verità dell'uomo deve impadronirsi del suo dolore

In order to be prepared to hope in what does not deceive, we must first lose hope in everything that deceives. —Georges Bernanos (in Reason for Being by Jacques Ellul)

J'ai connu trop d'âmes, Sabiroux, j'ai trop entendu la parole humaine, quand elle ne sert plus à déguiser la honte, mais à l'exprimer; prise à sa source, pompée comme le sang d'une blessure. Moi aussi, j'ai cru pouvoir lutter, sinon vaincre. Au début de notre vie sacerdotale nous nous faisons du pécheur une idée si singulière, si généreuse. Révolte, blasphème, sacrilège, cela a sa grandeur sauvage, c'est une bête qu'on va dompter... Dompter le pécheur! ô la ridicule pensée! Dompter la faiblesse et la lâcheté mêmes ! Qui ne se lasserait de soulever une masse inerte ? Tous les mêmes! Dans l'effusion de l'aveu, dans l'élargissement du pardon, menteurs encore et toujours !

Je ne suis pas l'ambassadeur du Dieu des philosophes, je suis le serviteur de Jésus-Christ.

L'honneur d'un peuple appartient aux morts et les vivants n'en ont que l'usufruit

Lumea e plina de oameni care nu tainuiesc nimic pentru ca nu au nimic de ascuns. Nu sunt nimic. Pentru tineretea dvs. acesta este un adevar cam dur, sau care depaseste puterea dvs de intelegere! Nu sunteti mult diferit de imaginea pe care si-o fac despre dumneavoastra oamenii din Megere? Stiu ei ca ii dispretuiti? Ce ati castiga de altminteri dezvaluindu-va unor fiinte de alt soi? Ati ales tacerea, fie! Dar chiar si tacerea nu v-ar fi protejat eficient prea mult timp. Ar fi sosit si clipa in care ati fi fost nevoit sa purtati o masca, niste masti, o infinitate, o masca pentru fiecare zi a vietii dumneavoastra. Dura constrangere din care un om demn de acest nume isi face un joc pasionant pentru ca e dificil si periculos. Mai retineti cel putin aceasta. Fiinta vulgara nu reuseste sa se cunoasca decat prin intermediul judecatii celuilalt, celalalt e cel care ii da numele, numele sub care traieste si moare, ca o nava sub un pavilion strain.

When writing of oneself one should show no mercy.