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A poor man with nothing in his belly needs hope, illusion, more than bread.

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
Nothing
Needs
Men
Belly
Bread
Illusion
Poverty
Poor
Hope

More quotes by Georges Bernanos

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The wish to pray is a prayer in itself.
Georges Bernanos
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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.
Georges Bernanos
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The devil, you see, is that friend who never stays with us to the end.
Georges Bernanos
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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?
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You owe it to everyone you love to find pockets of tranquility in your busy world.
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Appearances are nothing.... And first of all they should not be feared, they are only dangerous to the weak.
Georges Bernanos
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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.
Georges Bernanos
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Faith is not a thing which one loses, we merely cease to shape our lives by it.
Georges Bernanos
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[T]he cradle is shallower than the grave.
Georges Bernanos
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Fear, true fear, is a savage frenzy. Of all the insanities of which we are capable, it is surely the cruelest. There is naught to equal its drive, and naught can survive its thrust.
Georges Bernanos
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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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The modern state no longer has anything but rights it does not recognize duties any more.
Georges Bernanos
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Civilization exists precisely so that there may be no masses but rather men alert enough never to constitute masses.
Georges Bernanos
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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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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.
Georges Bernanos
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Optimism has always seemed to me the cunning alibi of egoists, anxious to cover up their state of chronic self-satisfaction. They are optimists in order to avoid pitying other men and their misfortune. ~~ Yet pity is a vexed question.
Georges Bernanos
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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
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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.
Georges Bernanos
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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.
Georges Bernanos
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Justice in the hands of the powerful is merely a governing system like any other. Why call it justice?
Georges Bernanos