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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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Georges Bernanos
Age: 60 †
Born: 1888
Born: February 20
Died: 1948
Died: July 5
Author
Essayist
Journalist
Librettist
Novelist
Writer
9th arrondissement
Paris
Bernanos
Fear
Savages
True
Anticipation
Insanity
Surely
Cruelest
Survive
Naught
Drive
Frenzy
Capable
Savage
Equal
Thrust

More quotes by 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.
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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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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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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
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A poor man with nothing in his belly needs hope, illusion, more than bread.
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The devil, you see, is that friend who never stays with us to the end.
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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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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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Civilization exists precisely so that there may be no masses but rather men alert enough never to constitute masses.
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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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It is the perpetual dread of fear, the fear of fear, that shapes the face of a brave man.
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The wish to pray is a prayer in itself.
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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What does it matter, all is grace.
Georges Bernanos
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Hell is not to love anymore.
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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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?
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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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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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