01UndatedSatan is too hard a master. He would never command as did the Other with divine simplicity: 'Do likewise.' The devil will have no victims resemble him. He permits only a rough caricature, impotent, abject, which has to serve as food for eternal irony, the mordant irony of the depths.Georges Bernanos / quote ↗
02UndatedAnd now she was thinking of her own death, with her heart gripped not by fear but by the excitement of a great discovery, the feeling that she was about to learn what she had been unable to learn from her brief experience of love. What she thought about death was childish, but what could never have touched her in the past now filled her with poignant tenderness, as sometimes a familiar face we see suddenly with the eyes of love makes us aware that it has been dearer to us than life itself for longer than we have ever realized.Georges Bernanos / quote ↗
04UndatedO miracle—thus to be able to give [peace] we ourselves do not possess, sweet miracle of our empty hands!Georges Bernanos / quote ↗
05UndatedWe pay a heavy, very heavy price for the superhuman dignity of our calling. The ridiculous is always so near to the sublime. And the world, usually so indulgent to foibles, hates ours instinctively.Georges Bernanos / quote ↗
06UndatedTeaching is no joke, sonny! ... Comforting truths, they call it! Truth is meant to save you first, and the comfort comes afterwards. Besides, you've no right to call that sort of thing comfort. Might as well talk about condolences! The Word of God is a red-hot iron. And you who preach it 'ud go picking it up with a pair of tongs, for fear of burning yourself, you daren't get hold of it with both hands. It's too funny! Why, the priest who descends from the pulpit of Truth, with a mouth like a hen's vent, a little hot but pleased with himself, he's not been preaching: at best he's been purring like a tabby-cat. Mind you that can happen to us all, we're all half asleep, it's the devil to wake us up, sometimes — the apostles slept all right at Gethsemane. Still, there's a difference... And mind you many a fellow who waves his arms and sweats like a furniture-remover isn't necessarily any more awakened than the rest. On the contrary. I simply mean that when the Lord has drawn from me some word for the good of souls, I know, because of the pain of it.Georges Bernanos / quote ↗
07UndatedHis face frankly displays his suffering, expressing it with a truly royal simplicity. At such moments even the very best people are apt to give themselves away with the kind of look which says to you more or less directly: 'You see how I'm sticking it out; don't praise me, it's my nature; thanks all the same.' But the Curé de Torcy looks straight at you, guilelessly. His eyes beg your compassion and sympathy. But with what nobility they beg! A king might beg in just that way.Georges Bernanos / quote ↗
08UndatedThe work God carries out in us,' he said after a short pause, 'is not often what we expect. A great deal of the time the Holy Spirit seems to be working backward in us and wasting time. If a lump of iron could form an idea of the file that's slowly rough-shaping it, how furious it would be! Yet that's how God shapes us. Certain saints' lives seem horribly monotonous and desolate.Georges Bernanos / quote ↗
09UndatedLust 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 / quote ↗
10UndatedSuicide 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 / quote ↗
11UndatedWe priests are sneered at and always shall be—the accusation is such an easy one—as deeply envious, hypocritical haters of virility. Yet whosoever has experienced sin must know that lust, with its parasitic growth, is for ever threatening to stifle virility as well as intelligence. Impotent to create, it can only contaminate in the germ the frail promise of humanity; it is probably at the very source, the primal cause of all human blemishes; and when amid the windings of this huge jungle whose paths are unknown, we encounter Lust, just as she is, as she emerged forth from the hands of the Master of Prodigies, the cry from our hearts is not only terror but imprecation: 'You, you alone have set death loose upon the world!Georges Bernanos / quote ↗
12UndatedI have no ambition to change my nature, I merely intend to conquer my dislikes.Georges Bernanos / quote ↗
13UndatedFear true fear is a savage frenzy. Of all the insanities of which we are capable it is surely the most cruel.Georges Bernanos / quote ↗
14UndatedA 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.Georges Bernanos / quote ↗
17UndatedOur rages daughters of despair creep and squirm like worms. Prayer is the only form of revolt which remains upright.Georges Bernanos / quote ↗
18UndatedA poor man with nothing in his belly needs hope, illusion, more than bread.Georges Bernanos / quote ↗
20UndatedIt is the perpetual dread of fear, the fear of fear, that shapes the face of a brave man.Georges Bernanos / quote ↗
21UndatedFaith is not a thing which one 'loses', we merely cease to shape our lives by it.Georges Bernanos / quote ↗
22UndatedLittle things seem nothing, but they give peace, like those meadow flowers which individually seem odorless but all together perfume the air.Georges Bernanos / quote ↗
23UndatedThe first sign of corruption in a society that is still alive is that the end justifies the means.Georges Bernanos / quote ↗
