Quote

First of all, be what you are.

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
First

More quotes by Georges Bernanos

Image
Civilization exists precisely so that there may be no masses but rather men alert enough never to constitute masses.
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
Faith is not a thing which one loses, we merely cease to shape our lives by it.
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
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
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
Image
The wish to pray is a prayer in itself.
Georges Bernanos
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Our rages, daughters of despair, creep and squirm like worms. Prayer is the only form of revolt which remains upright.
Georges Bernanos
Image
What does it matter, all is grace.
Georges Bernanos
Image
Rather than the obsession with impurity, you'd do better to fear the nostalgia for purity.
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
Appearances are nothing.... And first of all they should not be feared, they are only dangerous to the weak.
Georges Bernanos
Image
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
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
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
Image
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