Francois Mauriac Quotes
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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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Doubt is nothing but a trivial agitation on the surface of the soul, while deep down there is a calm certainty.
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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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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.
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That is the mystery of grace: it never comes too late.
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No love, no friendship, can cross the path of our destiny without leaving some mark on it forever.
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Human love is often but the encounter of two weaknesses.
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A writer is essentially a man who does not resign himself to loneliness.
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The grandeur of man lies in song, not in thought.
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To love someone is to see a miracle invisible to others.
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God does not answer our desperate questionings; he simply gives us himself.
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If you would tell me the heart of a man, tell me not what he reads, but what he rereads.
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I write whenever it suits me. During a creative period I write every day; a novel should not be interrupted. When I cease to be carried along, when I no longer feel as though I were taking down dictation, I stop.
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Where does discipline end? Where does cruelty begin? Somewhere between these, thousands of children inhabit a voiceless hell.
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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.
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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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If the flame inside you goes out, the souls that are next to you will die of cold.
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I love Germany so much I'm glad there are two of them.
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There is no accident in our choice of reading. All our sources are related.
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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
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The arrogance of poets is only a defense; doubt gnaws the greatest among them; they need our testimony to escape despair.
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The scapegoat has always had the mysterious power of unleashing man's ferocious pleasure in torturing, corrupting, and befouling.
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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.
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We know well only what we are deprived of.
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A man's passion for the mountain is, above all, his childhood which refuses to die.
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I believe that only poetry counts ... A great novelist is first of all a great poet.
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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.
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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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A good critic is the sorcerer who makes some hidden spring gush forth unexpectedly under our feet.
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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.
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