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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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Georges Bernanos
Age: 60 †
Born: 1888
Born: February 20
Died: 1948
Died: July 5
Author
Essayist
Journalist
Librettist
Novelist
Writer
9th arrondissement
Paris
Bernanos
State
Anxious
Alibi
Order
Cover
Pitying
States
Optimism
Optimists
Self
Pity
Chronic
Always
Satisfaction
Misfortune
Men
Avoid
Optimist
Seemed
Cunning
Egoists
Question
Misfortunes
Vexed

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A poor man with nothing in his belly needs hope, illusion, more than bread.
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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?
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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 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.
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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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To be able to share in another's joy, that is the secret of happiness.
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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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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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Justice in the hands of the powerful is merely a governing system like any other. Why call it justice?
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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.
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Rather than the obsession with impurity, you'd do better to fear the nostalgia for purity.
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What does it matter, all is grace.
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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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Who are you to condemn another's sin? He who condemns sin becomes part of it, espouses it.
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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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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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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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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.
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Truth is meant to save you first, and the comfort comes afterwards.
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