Francois Mauriac Quotes

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

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.

Human love is often but the encounter of two weaknesses.

We know well only what we are deprived of.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

Tell me what you read and I'll tell you who you are is true enough, but I'd know you better if you told me what you reread.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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