Georges Bernanos Quotes
Have you never been moved by poor men's fidelity, the image of you they form in their simple minds? Why should you always talk of their envy, without understanding that what they ask of you is not so much your worldly goods, as something very hard to define, which they themselves can put no name to; yet at times it consoles their loneliness; a dream of splendor, of magnificence, a tawdry dream, a poor man's dream -- and yet God blesses it!
Our rages, daughters of despair, creep and squirm like worms. Prayer is the only form of revolt which remains upright.
And what have you laymen made of hell? A kind of penal servitude for eternity, on the lines of your convict prisons on earth, to which you condemn in advance all the wretched felons your police have hunted from the beginning -- "enemies of society," as you call them. You're kind enough to include the blasphemers and the profane. What proud or reasonable man could stomach such a notion of God's justice? And when you find that notion inconvenient it's easy enough for you to put it on one side. Hell is not to love any more, Madame. Not to love any more!
Fear, true fear, is a savage frenzy. Of all the insanities of which we are capable, it is surely the most cruel.
Faith is not a thing which one "loses," we merely cease to shape our lives by it.
God ordains that beggars should beg for greatness, as for all else, when greatness shines out of them, they don't know it.
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. To shake off this drizzle of ashes you must be for ever on the go. And so people are always "on the go.
The wish for prayer is a prayer in itself
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.
Haven't we mothers all given our sons a taste for lies, lies which from the cradle upwards lull them, reassure them, send them to sleep: lies as soft and warm as a breast!