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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.

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
Pity
Teenage
Hovered
Bird
Tenderness
Watchfulness
Knowing
Sentiments
Surrounds
Around
Irony
Mixture
Young
Surround
Mixtures
Firsts
Birds
Sentiment
First
Hardly
Adolescence
Flight
Cunning

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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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Truth is meant to save you first, and the comfort comes afterwards.
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Faith is not a thing which one loses, we merely cease to shape our lives by it.
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The modern state no longer has anything but rights it does not recognize duties any more.
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It is the perpetual dread of fear, the fear of fear, that shapes the face of a brave man.
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There is nothing that God hates so much as a liar.
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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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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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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.
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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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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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Who are you to condemn another's sin? He who condemns sin becomes part of it, espouses it.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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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Rather than the obsession with impurity, you'd do better to fear the nostalgia for purity.
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You owe it to everyone you love to find pockets of tranquility in your busy world.
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A poor man with nothing in his belly needs hope, illusion, more than bread.
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God knows that we should not despise anything. We must do our best.
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