Francois Mauriac Quotes & Sayings

She was surprised to find that something from deep down in herself welled into her eyes and burned her cheeks: a few poor tears shed by one who never cried! — Francois Mauriac

God does not answer our desperate questionings; he simply gives us himself. — Francois Mauriac

What an odd creature you are, Bernard, with your constant fear of death! Do you never have a feeling, as I do, of utter futility? No? Doesn't it occur to you that the sort of life people like us lead is remarkably like death? — Francois Mauriac

He adored force and hated weakness. It is the crime of female natures. — Francois Mauriac

The sin against nature [is] - compulsory celibacy — Francois Mauriac

What I fear is not being forgotten after my death, but, rather, not being enough forgotten. As we were saying, it is not our books that survive, but our poor lives that linger in the histories. — Francois Mauriac

Men resemble great deserted palaces: the owner occupies only a few rooms and has closed-off wings where he never ventures. — Francois Mauriac

I felt at one and the same time quite close, within reach of my hand, and yet an infinite distance away, an unknown world of goodness. Often Isa had said to me: 'You, who see nothing but evil ... You, who see evil everywhere ... ' It was true, and it was not true. — Francois Mauriac

The man who partakes in the breaking of the bread dares to build his house on the very core of love. He becomes, as it were, Godlike, but regardless of the strength he derives from it, his free will remains. We are always free to disown this immense grace, to abuse it. The Greatest Love may be betrayed. Fed on the Living Bread, we nevertheless conceal a part of ourselves which longs for swine's food. — Francois Mauriac

A good critic is the sorcerer who makes some hidden spring gush forth unexpectedly under our feet. — Francois Mauriac

If the flame inside you goes out, the souls that are next to you will die of cold. — Francois Mauriac

Being for every man the touchstone of faith and love, the Eucharist, like on the Cross, divided the minds as soon as it was announced ... Nothing engages a man as much as does the Eucharist — Francois Mauriac

The arrogance of poets is only a defense; doubt gnaws the greatest among them; they need our testimony to escape despair. — Francois Mauriac

A cemetery saddens us because it is the only place of the world in which we do not meet our dead again. — Francois Mauriac

To love someone is to see a miracle invisible to others. — Francois Mauriac

That is the mystery of grace: it never comes too late. — Francois Mauriac

No love, no friendship, can cross the path of our destiny without leaving some mark on it forever. — Francois Mauriac

I remained standing in the middle of the room, swaying on my feet as though I had received a blow. I thought of my life and saw what it had been. No one could swim against such a current of mud. I had been a man so horrible that he could have no friend. But wasn't that, I asked myself, because I had always been incapable of wearing a disguise? If all men went through life with unmasked faces, as I had done for half a century, one might be surprised to find how little difference there was between them. But, in fact, no one lives with his face uncovered, no one. Most men ape greatness or nobility. Though they do not know it, they conform to certain fixed types, literary or other. This the saints know, and they hate and despise themselves because they see themselves with unclouded eyes. I should not have been so universally condemned had I not been so defenseless, so open, and so naked. — Francois Mauriac

We are, all of us, molded and remolded by those who have loved us, and though that love may pass, we remain none the less their work
a work that very likely they do not recognize, and which is never exactly what they intended. — Francois Mauriac

No man can bear a child's cross. — Francois Mauriac

Did you ever have a conversation with someone who misunderstood everything you had to say? It's exhausting, and the ironic part is that the more you try and explain yourself, the more mixed up things become. Your best friend knows when you're kidding, venting, and tired. He or she knows you and therefore doesn't read into the things you say. — Francois Mauriac

I write whenever it suits me. During a creative period I write every day; a novel should not be interrupted. — Francois Mauriac

It seems that, after nineteen centuries of extraordinary glorification, the small Host for which so many cathedrals have sprung up, the small Host that has rested in millions of breasts and that has found a tabernacle and worshippers even in the desert - it seems that the triumphant Host of Lourdes and the Eucharistic Congresses of Chicago and Carthage remains as unknown, as secret as when it appeared for the first time in a room in Jerusalem. Light is in the world as in the days of St. John the Baptist, and the world does not know it — Francois Mauriac

I love Germany so dearly that I hope there will always be two of them. — Francois Mauriac

By the time dusk fell, he was back in his room. The last of the daylight lay like fine ashes on the roof-tops. He did not light his lamp, but sat by the fireplace in the dark, seeking in the far distance of his past some vague memory of a love-affair, some recollection of a friendship, with which to soften the hard tyranny of isolation. — Francois Mauriac

The effort of explaining, even of expressing himself, had become, with the years, more and more terrifying to him. Whether from laziness or from inability to find the right words, he had developed almost a passion for silence. — Francois Mauriac

Where does discipline end? Where does cruelty begin? Somewhere between these, thousands of children inhabit a voiceless hell. — Francois Mauriac

The Eucharist engages us unreservedly; it is a pact of love, an alliance signed in the deeper recesses of our being. All our potentialities are called upon to warrant the protection and fulfillment of this pact. — Francois Mauriac

A man's passion for the mountain is, above all, his childhood which refuses to die. — Francois Mauriac

There is no accident in our choice of reading. All our sources are related. — Francois Mauriac

We know well only what we are deprived of. — Francois Mauriac

Every novel worthy of the name is like another planet, whether large or small, which has its own laws just as it has its own flora and fauna. — Francois Mauriac

It never occurs to one to think whether she is pretty or ugly. One just surrenders to her charm. — Francois Mauriac

The grandeur of man lies in song, not in thought. — Francois Mauriac

I've always had a passion for tearing the bandages from other people's eyes. I've always insisted that those round me should see things as they are. I suppose it is that I need companionship in despair. I can't understand not despairing. — Francois Mauriac

Death was not a person ... with a devil one could talk, with the worst of monsters one could reach some sort of understanding, make some kind of bargain ... Death was horrible just because it was nothing, because it had no existence, because it smothered all it touched, turned everything to emptiness. — Francois Mauriac

The temples of those who deny the Real Presence are like corpses. The Lord was taken away and we do not know where they have laid Him. — Francois Mauriac

This God who, as the psalmist said, built His tabernacles in the sun, now establishes Himself in the very core of the flesh and the blood. — Francois Mauriac

Observe that for the novelist who has remained Christian, like myself, man is someone creating himself or destroying himself. He is not an immobile being, fixed, cast in a mold once and for all. This is what makes the traditional psychological novel so different from what I did or thought I was doing. The human being as I conceive him in the novel is a being caught up in the drama of human salvation, even if he doesn't know it. — Francois Mauriac

What a fool she was ever to have imagined that there might be some place in the world where she could sink to the earth with the knowledge that there were people round her who understood, who perhaps even admired and loved her! She was fated to carry loneliness about with her as a leper carries his scabs. 'No one can do anything for me: no one can do anything against me. — Francois Mauriac

I love Germany so much I'm glad there are two of them. — Francois Mauriac

If you would tell me the heart of a man, tell me not what he reads, but what he rereads. — Francois Mauriac

The really pure in heart know nothing of what goes on around them each day, each night; never realize what poisonous weeds spring up beneath their childish feet. — Francois Mauriac

The scapegoat has always had the mysterious power of unleashing man's ferocious pleasure in torturing, corrupting, and befouling. — Francois Mauriac

Tell me what you read and I will tell you who you are. — Francois Mauriac

Even the genuinely good cannot, unaided, learn to love. To penetrate beyond the absurdities, the vices, and, above all, the stupidities of human creatures, one must possess the secret of a love which the world has now forgotten. Until that secret shall have been discovered, all betterment in conditions of life will be in vain — Francois Mauriac

I believe that only poetry counts ... A great novelist is first of all a great poet. — Francois Mauriac

Let us be wary of ready-made ideas about cowardice and courage: the same burden weighs infinitely more heavily on some shoulders than on others. — Francois Mauriac

Doubt is nothing but a trivial agitation on the surface of the soul, while deep down there is a calm certainty. — Francois Mauriac

Human love is often but the encounter of two weaknesses. — Francois Mauriac

A writer is essentially a man who does not resign himself to loneliness. — Francois Mauriac