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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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Georges Bernanos
Age: 60 †
Born: 1888
Born: February 20
Died: 1948
Died: July 5
Author
Essayist
Journalist
Librettist
Novelist
Writer
9th arrondissement
Paris
Bernanos
Civilization
Rather
May
Constitute
Enough
Alert
Never
Masses
Men
Precisely
Exists
Mass

More quotes by Georges Bernanos

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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.
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It's a fine thing to rise above pride, but you must have pride in order to do so.
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The modern state no longer has anything but rights it does not recognize duties any more.
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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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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.
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First of all, be what you are.
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Justice in the hands of the powerful is merely a governing system like any other. Why call it justice?
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God knows that we should not despise anything. We must do our best.
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[T]he cradle is shallower than the grave.
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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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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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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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The devil, you see, is that friend who never stays with us to the end.
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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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[P]ride has no intrinsic substance, being no more than the name given to the soul devouring itself. When that loathsome perversion of love has borne its fruit, it has another, more meaningful and weightier name. We call it hatred.
Georges Bernanos
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Sadness came into the world with Satan - that world our Saviour never prayed for, the world you say I do not know. Oh, it is not so difficult to recognize: it is the world that prefers cold to warmth! What can God find to say to those who, of their own free will, of their own weight incline towards sadness and turn instinctively towards the night?
Georges Bernanos
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There is nothing that God hates so much as a liar.
Georges Bernanos
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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?
Georges Bernanos
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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.
Georges Bernanos