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Rather than the obsession with impurity, you'd do better to fear the nostalgia for purity.

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
Better
Impurity
Nostalgia
Obsession
Purity
Rather

More quotes by Georges Bernanos

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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 thought which does not result in an action is nothing much, and an action which does not proceed from a thought is nothing at all.
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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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God knows that we should not despise anything. We must do our best.
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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
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A poor man with nothing in his belly needs hope, illusion, more than bread.
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.
Georges Bernanos
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Civilization exists precisely so that there may be no masses but rather men alert enough never to constitute masses.
Georges Bernanos
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[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
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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?
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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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
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Who are you to condemn another's sin? He who condemns sin becomes part of it, espouses it.
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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The first sign of corruption in a society that is still alive is that the end justifies the means.
Georges Bernanos
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You owe it to everyone you love to find pockets of tranquility in your busy world.
Georges Bernanos
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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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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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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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[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