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
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Georges Bernanos quotes
A poor man with nothing in his belly needs hope, illusion, more than bread.
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.
Civilization exists precisely so that there may be no masses but rather men alert enough never to constitute masses.
Faith is not a thing which one "loses," we merely cease to shape our lives by it.
God ordains that beggars should beg for greatness, as for all else, when greatness shines out of them, and they don't know it.
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.
It is the perpetual dread of fear, the fear of fear, that shapes the face of a brave man.
It's a fine thing to rise above pride, but you must have pride in order to do so.
No one ever discovers the depths of his own loneliness.
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 first sign of corruption in a society that is still alive is that the end justifies the means.
The modern state no longer has anything but rights; it does not recognize duties any more.
The wish to pray is a prayer in itself. God can ask no more than that of us.
Truth is meant to save you first, and the comfort comes afterward.
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!
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!
Who are you to condemn another's sin? He who condemns sin becomes part of it, espouses it.
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