Georges Bernanos

“Je crois, je suis sûr que beaucoup d’hommes n’engagent jamais leur être, leur sincérité profonde. Ils vivent à la surface d’eux-mêmes, et le sol humain est si riche que cette mince couche superficielle suffit pour une maigre moisson, qui donne l’illusion d’une véritable destinée.”

“S'il n'y avait que des salauds dans le monde, le Réalisme serait aussi le Bon Sens, car le Réalisme est précisément le bon sens des salauds.”

“Satan is too hard a master. He would never command as did the Other with divine simplicity: 'Do likewise.' The devil will have no victims resemble him. He permits only a rough caricature, impotent, abject, which has to serve as food for eternal irony, the mordant irony of the depths.”

“Our habits are our friends. Even our bad habits.”

“On ne comprend absolument rien à la civilisation moderne si l'on n'admet pas tout d'abord qu'elle est une conspiration universelle contre toute espèce de vie intérieure.”

“Tiens, une ville qu'on traverse la nuit, et tout à coup tu dépasses la dernière maison, tu retombes dans le silence, comme dans le vide.”

“Il faut beaucoup de prodigues pour faire un peuple généreux, beaucoup d'indisciplinés pour faire un peuple libre, et beaucoup de jeunes fous pour faire un peuple héroïque”

“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.”

“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.”

“And now she was thinking of her own death, with her heart gripped not by fear but by the excitement of a great discovery, the feeling that she was about to learn what she had been unable to learn from her brief experience of love. What she thought about death was childish, but what could never have touched her in the past now filled her with poignant tenderness, as sometimes a familiar face we see suddenly with the eyes of love makes us aware that it has been dearer to us than life itself for longer than we have ever realized.”

“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.”

“Void fascinates those who daren't look into it. They throw themselves in, for fear of falling.”

“God! how is it that we fail to recognize that the mask of pleasure, stripped of all hypocrisy, is that of anguish?”

“It is one of the most mysterious penalties of men that they should be forced to confide the most precious of their possessions to things so unstable and ever changing, alas, as words.”

“There remains the unforseen. And the unforseen is never negligible. ”