Francois Mauriac Quotes
Francois Mauriac offers bleak, poetic reflections on love, suffering, and hidden cruelty.
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Ce qui fait le poete, n'est-ce pas l'amour, la recherche desesperee du moindre rayon de soleil d'autrefois jouant sur le parquet d'une chambre d'enfant?
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Le mythe de Promethee signifie que toute la tristesse du monde a son siege dans le foie. Mais qui oserait reconnaitre une verite si humble?
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On atteint aisement une ame vivante a travers les crimes, les vices les plus tristes, mais la vulgarite est infranchissable.
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Presque tous les hommes ressemblent a ces grands palais deserts dont le proprietaire n'habite que quelques pieces; et il ne penetre jamais danss les ailes condamnees.
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Ou finit la correction? Ou commence le martyre? Dans l'entre-deux, des milliers d'enfants peuplent un enfer qui ne fait pas de bruit.
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Il s'en est fallu de tres peu que les larmes de Judas ne fussent confondues, dans le souvenir des hommes, avec celles de Pierre. Il aurait pu devenir un saint, le patron de nous tous qui ne cessons de trahir.
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A good critic is the sorcerer who makes some hidden spring gush forth unexpectedly under our feet.
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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.
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A cemetery saddens us because it is the only place of the world in which we do not meet our dead again.
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That is the mystery of grace: it never comes too late.
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Men resemble great deserted palaces: the owner occupies only a few rooms and has closed-off wings where he never ventures.
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To love someone is to see a miracle invisible to others.
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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.
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I believe that only poetry counts ... A great novelist is first of all a great poet.
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If the flame inside you goes out, the souls that are next to you will die of cold.
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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.
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The grandeur of man lies in song, not in thought.
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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.