Georges Bernanos

Who was Georges Bernanos?

Georges Bernanos was 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 leading to France's eventual occupation by Germany in 1940.

Famous Quotes:

• 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!
• Who are you to condemn another's sin? He who condemns sin becomes part of it, espouses it.
• Faith is not a thing which one loses, we merely cease to shape our lives by it.
• God ordains that beggars should beg for greatness, as for all else, when greatness shines out of them, and they don't know it.
• 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.
• The wish to pray is a prayer in itself. God can ask no more than that of us.
• 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.
• A poor man with nothing in his belly needs hope, illusion, more than bread.
• The first sign of corruption in a society that is still alive is that the end justifies the means.
• I know the compassion of others is a relief at first. I don't despise it. But it can't quench pain, it slips through your soul as through a sieve. And when our suffering has been dragged from one pity to another, as from one mouth to another, we can no longer respect or love it.