Explore Quotes by Georges Bernanos

The wish to pray is a prayer in itself. God can ask no more than that of us.

Hell, madam, is to love no longer.

Truth is meant to save you first, and the comfort comes afterward.

Truth is meant to save you first, and the comfort comes afterwards.

You owe it to everyone you love to find pockets of tranquility in your busy world.

It is the perpetual dread of fear, the fear of fear, that shapes the face of a brave man.

Who are you to condemn another's sin? He who condemns sin becomes part of it, espouses it.

No one ever discovers the depths of his own loneliness.

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.

Civilization exists precisely so that there may be no masses but rather men alert enough never to constitute masses.

A poor man with nothing in his belly needs hope, illusion, more than bread.

The first sign of corruption in a society that is still alive is that the end justifies the means.

Little things seem nothing, but they give peace, like those meadow flowers which individually seem odorless but all together perfume the air.

It's a fine thing to rise above pride, but you must have pride in order to do so.

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.

The modern state no longer has anything but rights; it does not recognize duties any more.

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.

Faith is not a thing which one loses, we merely cease to shape our lives by it.

But I shall give less thought to the future, I shall work in the present. I feel such work is within my power. For I only succeed in small things, and when I am tried by anxiety, I am bound to say it is the small joys that release me.

Hell, madame, is to love no longer.

Hope is a risk that must be run.