Georges Bernanos Quotes

67 Sourced Quotes

Everybody in Palma knew that my son was a lieutenant in the Phalange, and I was often seen at mass. For months I had been friendly with insurgent leaders who were feared by all the suspects. And yet people I hardly knew spoke freely to me, when the slightest indiscretion on my part would have cost their liberty, or their lives. I'll tell you why it was. It was because it is still known in the world that a Frenchman doesn't let himself become a policeman's pawn - that's why. Because a Frenchman is a free man.

Georges Bernanos
I can now see to the bottom of my own depths, there is nothing stopping my gaze, no obstacle is in the way. And there is nothing there.

Georges Bernanos
More often than not, nothingness is reluctantly and despairingly taken to be the only hypothesis possible when all the others have failed, since by definition it cannot be disproven and is beyond the scope of reason.

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

Georges Bernanos
Like all truly pure souls she [Chantal] quickly resigned herself to past faults, thought only of how to repair whatever harm they had done. "Of all my daughters, you are certainly the least bothered by scruples of conscience," Abbé Chevance used to say.... Even sin, once the will is detached and no longer nourishes it, withers and dies sterile. It is in the secret of intentions, like in a decomposing humus, in the dark forest of future sins, unpardoned sins, half dead, half living, that new poisons are distilled.

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

Georges Bernanos
There is no mask that temptation cannot wear, and the idea that Satan is purely a logician is an illusion held by not a few naive people. Many a shifty old man sees him as an opponent in an academic argument, but if he does the observer is still at the stage of games and trifles. Sometimes, though not often, the black desire to harm wins out over quicker and less bitter delights. When that happens, evil shows itself for what it truly is, not a way of life, but an attack on life itself.

Georges Bernanos
To you a pious young girl who goes to mass and communion, seems pretty silly and childish; you take us for innocents... Well, let me tell you, sometimes we know more about evil than people who have only learned to offend God.

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
Chantal to Fiodor:
"It seems to me that evil is much less complicated than you would like to believe. Here or anywhere else there is only one sin."
"What sin?"
"To tempt God," she said. "And what's the use? I think you are really very stupid. God looks where He pleases. If He has not yet looked at you, what is the use of tempting Him?"

Georges Bernanos
I have done no passably decent job in this world which did not at first seem to me useless - absurdly useless, useless to the point of nausea. My secret demon is called : What's the use?

Georges Bernanos
A good Christian does not care for miracles very much, because a miracle is God looking after His own affairs, and we prefer looking after them for Him.

Georges Bernanos
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.

Georges Bernanos
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.

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

Georges Bernanos
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.

Georges Bernanos
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.

Georges Bernanos