Francois Mauriac Quotes

#1. To quote French author Francois Mauriac, 'Tell me what you read and I'll tell you who your are' is true enough, but I'd know you better if you told me what you reread.

Sarah Wendell

#2. If you would tell me the heart of a man, tell me not what he reads, but what he rereads.

Francois Mauriac

#3. 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

#4. Tell me what you read and I will tell you who you are.

Francois Mauriac

#5. 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

#6. 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

#7. 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

#8. Human love is often but the encounter of two weaknesses.

Francois Mauriac

#9. I love Germany so dearly that I hope there will always be two of them.

Francois Mauriac

#10. 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

#11. God does not answer our desperate questionings; he simply gives us himself.

Francois Mauriac

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

Francois Mauriac

#13. 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

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

Francois Mauriac

#15. There is no accident in our choice of reading. All our sources are related.

Francois Mauriac

#16. He adored force and hated weakness. It is the crime of female natures.

Francois Mauriac

#17. No man can bear a child's cross.

Francois Mauriac

#18. 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

#19. 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

#20. A writer is essentially a man who does not resign himself to loneliness.

Francois Mauriac

#21. If the flame inside you goes out, the souls that are next to you will die of cold.

Francois Mauriac

#22. 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

#23. The sin against nature [is] - compulsory celibacy

Francois Mauriac

#24. We know well only what we are deprived of.

Francois Mauriac

#25. That is the mystery of grace: it never comes too late.

Francois Mauriac

#26. A man's passion for the mountain is, above all, his childhood which refuses to die.

Francois Mauriac

#27. I write whenever it suits me. During a creative period I write every day; a novel should not be interrupted.

Francois Mauriac

#28. I love Germany so much I'm glad there are two of them.

Francois Mauriac

#29. It never occurs to one to think whether she is pretty or ugly. One just surrenders to her charm.

Francois Mauriac

#30. 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

#31. A good critic is the sorcerer who makes some hidden spring gush forth unexpectedly under our feet.

Francois Mauriac

#32. 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

#33. 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

#34. Where does discipline end? Where does cruelty begin? Somewhere between these, thousands of children inhabit a voiceless hell.

Francois Mauriac

#35. The grandeur of man lies in song, not in thought.

Francois Mauriac

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

Francois Mauriac

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

Francois Mauriac

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

Francois Mauriac

#39. 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

#40. I believe that only poetry counts ... A great novelist is first of all a great poet.

Francois Mauriac

#41. To love someone is to see a miracle invisible to others.

Francois Mauriac

#42. 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

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

Francois Mauriac