Charles Péguy Quotes

Charles Pierre Péguy was a noted French poet, essayist, and editor. His two main philosophies were socialism and nationalism, but by 1908 at the latest, after years of uneasy agnosticism, he had become a believing but non-practicing Roman Catholic.

From that time, Catholicism strongly influenced his works. Wikipedia

✵ 7. January 1873 – 5. September 1914  •  Other names Charles P. Péguy, Charles Pierre Péguy

Charles Péguy photo

Charles Péguy: 13 quotes7 likes

Famous Charles Péguy Quotes

“Love is rarer than genius itself. And friendship is rarer than love.”

“He who does not bellow the truth when he knows the truth makes himself the accomplice of liars and forgers.”

"Lettre du Provincial" (21 December 1899)
Basic Verities, Prose and Poetry (1943)

“In my servant the ant, my tiny servant, who hoards greedily like a miser.
Who works like one unhappy and who has no break and who has no rest.”

The Portal of the Mystery of Hope (1912)

“I am so resplendent in my creation.
That in order really not to see me these poor people would have to be blind.”

The Portal of the Mystery of Hope (1912)

“There will be things that I do that no one will be left to understand.”

Le Mystère des saints Innocents [The Mystery of the Holy Innocents] (1912)

“The faith that I love the best, says God, is hope.”

Opening line.
The Portal of the Mystery of Hope (1912)

Charles Péguy Quotes

“Tyranny is always better organised than freedom.”

"War and Peace"
Basic Verities, Prose and Poetry (1943)

“The sinner is at the heart of Christianity. No one is as competent as the sinner in matters of Christianity. No one, except a saint.”

"Un Nouveau théologien" (1911)
Basic Verities, Prose and Poetry (1943)

“Towards this fine honor of a trade converged all the finest, all the most noble sentiments—dignity, pride. Never ask anything of anyone, they used to say. … In those days a workman did not know what it was to solicit. It is the bourgeoisie who, turning the workmen into bourgeois, have taught them to solicit.”

Source: Basic Verities, Prose and Poetry (1943), p. 83.

“The life of the honest man must be an apostasy and a perpetual desertion. The honest man must be a perpetual renegade, the life of an honest man must be a perpetual infidelity. For the man who wishes to remain faithful to truth must make himself continually unfaithful to all the continual, successive, indefatigable renascent errors. And the man who wishes to remain faithful to justice must make himself continually unfaithful to inexhaustibly triumphant injustices.”

Source: Basic Verities, Prose and Poetry (1943), p. 51

“Faith is a loyal Wife.
Charity is a Mother.
An ardent mother, noble-hearted.
Or an older sister who is like a mother.
Hope is a little girl, nothing at all.”

The Portal of the Mystery of Hope (1912)

“Work for them was joy itself and the deep root of their being. And the reason of their being. There was an incredible honor in work, the most beautiful of all the honors. … We have known this devotion to l’ouvrage bien faite, to the good job, carried and maintained to its most exacting claims. … Today, what remains of all this? How has … the only people that loved to work … been transformed into one which in the workyard takes the greatest pains not to lift a hand?”

Dans ce bel honneur de métier convergeaient tous le plus beaux, tous le plus nobles sentiments. Une dignité. Une fierté. Ne jamais rien demander à personne, disaient-ils. … Un ouvrier de ce temps-là ne savait pas ce que c’est que quémander. C’est la bourgeoisie qui quémande. C’est la bourgeoisie qui, les faisant bourgeois, leur a appris a quémander.
Source: Basic Verities, Prose and Poetry (1943), p. 81

“These bygone workmen did not serve, they worked. They had an absolute honor, which is honor proper. A chair rung had to be well made. That was an understood thing. That was the first thing. It wasn’t that the chair rung had to be well made for the salary or on account of the salary. It wasn’t that it was well made for the boss, nor for connoisseurs, nor for the boss’ clients. It had to be well made itself, in itself, for itself, in its very self. A tradition coming, springing from deep within the race, a history, an absolute, an honor, demanded that this chair rung be well made. Every part of the chair which could not be seen was just as perfectly made as the parts which could be seen. This was the selfsame principle of cathedrals. … There was no question of being seen or of not being seen. It was the innate being of work which needed to be well done.”

Source: Basic Verities, Prose and Poetry (1943), p. 82

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