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The first sign of corruption in a society that is still alive is that the end justifies the means.

Georges Bernanos

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Georges Bernanos
Age: 60 †
Born: 1888
Born: February 20
Died: 1948
Died: July 5
Author
Essayist
Journalist
Librettist
Novelist
Writer
9th arrondissement
Paris
Bernanos
Firsts
Sign
First
Alive
Mean
Literature
Justifies
Society
Deception
Means
Tyrants
Ends
Justify
Stills
Corruption
Still
Tyranny

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You owe it to everyone you love to find pockets of tranquility in your busy world.
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To be able to share in another's joy, that is the secret of happiness.
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Rather than the obsession with impurity, you'd do better to fear the nostalgia for purity.
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I have just discovered something I have always known: we can no more escape from one another than we can escape from God.
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[T]he cradle is shallower than the grave.
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First of all, be what you are.
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Civilization exists precisely so that there may be no masses but rather men alert enough never to constitute masses.
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Hell, madame, is to love no longer.
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Appearances are nothing.... And first of all they should not be feared, they are only dangerous to the weak.
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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.
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God knows that we should not despise anything. We must do our best.
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If hell has no answer for the questioning dead, it is not because it refuses to answer (for rigorous, alas, in observance, is the imperishable fire), but it is because hell has nothing to say, will say nothing eternally.
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All her life she [Chantal] had been carefully, heroically watching over mediocre beings who were hardly real, over things of no value.
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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 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.
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Our rages, daughters of despair, creep and squirm like worms. Prayer is the only form of revolt which remains upright.
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A large number of suspects, both men and women, escaped martial law for lack of any shred of evidence against them on which a court-martial could convict. So they began setting them free in groups, according to their birth-place. But half-way, the car-load would be emptied into a ditch.
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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.
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God! how is it that we fail to recognize that the mask of pleasure, stripped of all hypocrisy, is that of anguish?
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