"A poor man with nothing in his belly needs hope, illusion, more than bread."
Read quote
87 likes
Quote collection
Georges Bernanos quotes (page 1 of 4)
68 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"It's a fine thing to rise above pride, but you must have pride in order to do so."
Read quote
86 likes
"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!"
Read quote
65 likes
"The first sign of corruption in a society that is still alive is that the end justifies the means."
Read quote
64 likes
"Fact is Our Lord knew all about the power of money: He gave capitalism a tiny niche in His scheme of things, He gave it a chance, He even provided a first installment of funds. Can you beat that? It's so magnificent. God despises nothing. After all, if the deal had come off, Judas would probably have endowed sanatoriums, hospitals, public libraries or laboratories."
Read quote
57 likes
"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!"
Read quote
52 likes
"Little things seem nothing, but they give peace, like those meadow flowers which individually seem odorless but all together perfume the air."
Read quote
34 likes
"Hope is a risk that must be run."
Read quote
29 likes
"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."
Read quote
27 likes
"Justice in the hands of the powerful is merely a governing system like any other. Why call it justice? Let us rather call it injustice, but of a sly effective order, based entirely on cruel knowledge of the resistance of the weak, their capacity for pain, humilation and misery. Injustice sustained at the exact degree of necessary tension to turn the cogs of the huge machine-for-the-making-of-rich-men, without bursting the boiler."
Read quote
26 likes
"Faith is not a thing which one loses, we merely cease to shape our lives by it."
Read quote
21 likes
"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."
Read quote
20 likes
"...the most dangerous shortsightedness consists in underestimating the mediocre."
Read quote
19 likes
"You owe it to everyone you love to find pockets of tranquility in your busy world."
Read quote
15 likes
"Civilization exists precisely so that there may be no masses but rather men alert enough never to constitute masses."
Read quote
13 likes
"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."
Read quote
11 likes
"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?"
Read quote
11 likes
"What does the truth matter? 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!"
Read quote
10 likes
"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."
Read quote
9 likes
"The wish to pray is a prayer in itself."
Read quote
9 likes