Georges Bernanos

Hope is a risk that must be run.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

More often than not, nothingness is reluctantly and despairingly taken to be the only hypothesis possible when all the others have failed, since by definition it cannot be disproven and is beyond the scope of reason.

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

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!

Hell, madam, is to love no longer.

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

Appearances are nothing.... And first of all they should not be feared, they are only dangerous to the weak.

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

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

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

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

No one ever discovers the depths of his own loneliness.

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

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

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.

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 t hat 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.