Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Georges Bernanos
Age: 60 †
Born: 1888
Born: February 20
Died: 1948
Died: July 5
Author
Essayist
Journalist
Librettist
Novelist
Writer
9th arrondissement
Paris
Bernanos
Another
Mouth
Soul
Mouths
Sieve
Firsts
Compassion
Quench
First
Longer
Dragged
Love
Respect
Slips
Suffering
Despise
Pain
Relief
Others
Pity

More quotes by Georges Bernanos

Image
Our rages, daughters of despair, creep and squirm like worms. Prayer is the only form of revolt which remains upright.
Georges Bernanos
Image
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
Image
A poor man with nothing in his belly needs hope, illusion, more than bread.
Georges Bernanos
Image
[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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
[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
Image
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.
Georges Bernanos
Image
To be able to share in another's joy, that is the secret of happiness.
Georges Bernanos
Image
All her life she [Chantal] had been carefully, heroically watching over mediocre beings who were hardly real, over things of no value.
Georges Bernanos
Image
Hell is not to love anymore.
Georges Bernanos
Image
Justice in the hands of the powerful is merely a governing system like any other. Why call it justice?
Georges Bernanos
Image
The modern state no longer has anything but rights it does not recognize duties any more.
Georges Bernanos
Image
It's a fine thing to rise above pride, but you must have pride in order to do so.
Georges Bernanos
Image
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
Image
The first sign of corruption in a society that is still alive is that the end justifies the means.
Georges Bernanos
Image
The devil, you see, is that friend who never stays with us to the end.
Georges Bernanos
Image
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
Image
It is the perpetual dread of fear, the fear of fear, that shapes the face of a brave man.
Georges Bernanos
Image
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