Georges Bernanos quotes

" When you think of the huge uninterrupted success of a book like Don Quixote, you're bound to realize that if humankind have not yet finished being revenged, by sheer laughter, for being let down in their greatest hope, it is because that hope was cherished so long and lay so deep! " # Disappointments # Books - Reading # Laughter

" The first sign of corruption in a society that is still alive is that the end justifies the means. " # Ends and Means # Power # Society

" 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! " # Riches # Love # Dreams

" Faith is not a thing which one loses, we merely cease to shape our lives by it. " # Faith # Life and Living # Friends and Friendship

" 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! " # Lies and Lying # Truth # Love

" No one ever discovers the depths of his own loneliness. " # Loneliness

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

" A poor man with nothing in his belly needs hope, illusion, more than bread. " # Poverty and The Poor # Illusion # Hope

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

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