A poor man with nothing in his belly needs hope, illusion, more than bread. – Georges Bernanos
What a cunning mixture of sentiment, pity, tenderness, irony surrounds adolescence, what knowing watchfulness! Young birds on their first flight are hardly so hovered around. – Georges Bernanos
When you think of the huge uninterrupted success of a book like Don Quixote, youre bound to realize that if humankind have not yet finished being revenged, by sheer laughter, for being let down in their greatest hope, it is because that hope was cherished so long and lay so deep! – Georges Bernanos
I know the compassion of others is a relief at first. I dont despise it. But it cant 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. – Georges Bernanos
It was the hour of four in the afternoon, and already in hillside homesteads the day was nearly done. There was everywhere an air of that sweet, old-fashioned leisure which the world has nearly lost. It lingered in the slant sunlight that threw shadows across the winding road… – Florence Bone (1875–1971), The Morning of To‑Day, 1907