Georges Bernanos
Georges Bernanos
Georges Bernanoswas a French author, and a soldier in World War I. Of Roman Catholic and monarchist leanings, he was critical of bourgeois thought and was opposed to what he identified as defeatism. He thought this led to France's eventual occupation by Germany in 1940 during World War II. Most of his novels have been translated into English and frequently published in both Great Britain and the United States...
NationalityFrench
ProfessionAuthor
Date of Birth20 February 1888
CountryFrance
Le de s ir de la prie' re est de j a' une prie' re. The wish for prayer is already a prayer.
I don't think we can ever learn much from ultra-sensitive, shifty faces, skilled in disguise, that hide themselves in lust, as beasts hide to die.
Our rages, daughters of despair, creep and squirm like worms. Prayer is the only form of revolt which remains upright.
Only the present counts.
[A]ll her life she [Chantal] had been carefully, heroically watching over mediocre beings who were hardly real, over things of no value.
...the most dangerous shortsightedness consists in underestimating the mediocre.
Hell is not to love anymore.
I have done no passably decent job in this world which did not at first seem to me useless - absurdly useless, useless to the point of nausea. My secret demon is called:;: What's the use?
[F]irst of all, be what you are.
Appearances are nothing.... And first of all they should not be feared, they are only dangerous to the weak.
What does it matter, all is grace.
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.
God ordains that beggars should beg for greatness, as for all else, when greatness shines out of them, and they don't know it.