Francois Mauriac quotes

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

—  Francois Mauriac

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

—  Francois Mauriac

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

—  Francois Mauriac

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

—  Francois Mauriac

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

—  Francois Mauriac

„I remained standing in the middle of the room, swaying on my feet as though I had received a blow. I thought of my life and saw what it had been. No one could swim against such a current of mud. I had been a man so horrible that he could have no friend. But wasn't that, I asked myself, because I had always been incapable of wearing a disguise? If all men went through life with unmasked faces, as I had done for half a century, one might be surprised to find how little difference there was between them. But, in fact, no one lives with his face uncovered, no one. Most men ape greatness or nobility. Though they do not know it, they conform to certain fixed types, literary or other. This the saints know, and they hate and despise themselves because they see themselves with unclouded eyes. I should not have been so universally condemned had I not been so defenseless, so open, and so naked.“

—  Francois Mauriac

Source: Viper's Tangle

„Very little would have been needed for the tears of Judas to be allied in the memory of mankind with those of Peter.“

—  Francois Mauriac

Vie de Jésus (Paris: Flammarion, 1936) p. 257; Julie Kernan (trans.) Life of Jesus (New York: David McKay, [1937] 1951) p. 223.
Context: Very little would have been needed for the tears of Judas to be allied in the memory of mankind with those of Peter. He might have become a saint, the patron of all of us who constantly betray Christ.

„Somewhere between these, thousands of children inhabit a voiceless hell.“

—  Francois Mauriac

Journal, 1932-1939 (Paris: Table ronde, 1947) p. 278; Adrienne Foulke (trans.) Second Thoughts (Plainview, NY: Books for Libraries Press, [1961] 1973) p. 148.
Context: Where does discipline end? Where does cruelty begin? Somewhere between these, thousands of children inhabit a voiceless hell.

„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.“

—  Francois Mauriac

„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

Source: Thérèse

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

—  Francois Mauriac

„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.“

—  Francois Mauriac

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

—  Francois Mauriac

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

—  Francois Mauriac

„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

„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

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

—  Francois Mauriac

„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.“

—  Francois Mauriac

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

—  Francois Mauriac