Quotes from book
Monsieur Ouine

Name: Monsieur Ouine
Author: Georges Bernanos

Georges BernanosOriginal title Monsieur Ouine (French, 1943)

Monsieur Ouine is a 1943 novel by the French writer Georges Bernanos. It tells the story of a retired teacher who settles in a village in northern France, where he becomes surrounded by mysterious deaths and other unexplained events. The book was published in English in 1945 as The Open Mind, translated by Geoffrey Dunlop. A new translation by William Bush was published in 2000 under the original French title.

“Hatred of the priest is one of man's profoundest instincts, as well as one of the least known. That it is as old as the race itself no one doubts, yet our age has raised it to an almost prodigious degree of refinement and excellence. With the decline or disappearance of other powers, the priest, even though appearing so intimately integrated into the life of society, has become a more singular and unclassifiable being than any of those old magicians the ancient world used to keep locked up like sacred animals in the depths of its temples, existing in the intimacy of the gods alone. Priests moreover are all the more singular and unclassifiable in that they do not recognize themselves as such and are nearly always dupes of the most gross outward appearances — whether of the irony of some or the servile deference of others. But that contradiction, by nature more political than religious and used far too long to nurture clerical pride, does, through the growing feeling of their loneliness and to the extent that it is gradually transformed into hostile indifference, throw them unarmed into the heart of social conflicts they naively pride themselves on being able to resolve by using texts. But, then, what does it matter? The hour is coming when, on the ruins of the old Christian order, a new order will be born that will indeed be an order of the world, the order of the Prince of this World, of that prince whose kingdom is of this world. And the hard law of necessity, stronger than any illusions, will then remove the very object for clerical pride so long maintained simply by conventions outlasting any belief. And the footsteps of beggars shall cause the earth to tremble once again.”

Georges Bernanos book Monsieur Ouine

Source: Monsieur Ouine, 1943, pp.176–177

“They are always talking about the fire of hell, but no one has ever seen it, my friends. For hell is cold. It used to be that the nights weren't long enough to wear out your malice, and you got up each morning with your breasts still full of poison. But now the devil himself has withdrawn from you. Ah, how alone we are in evil, my brothers! The poor human race dreams from century to century of breaking that solitude — but it's no use! The devil, who can do so many things, will never succeed in founding a Church, a Church that will put in common both the merits of hell and the sin of all. From now until the end of the world, the sinner will have to sin alone, always alone — for just as we die alone, so also do we sin alone. The devil, you see, is the friend who never stays with us to the end.”

Georges Bernanos book Monsieur Ouine

The curé of Fenouille to his congregation, p. 171
Monsieur Ouine, 1943

“A man given to vice is always an idealist.”

Georges Bernanos book Monsieur Ouine

Dr. Malépine to Monsieur Arsène, the mayor of Fenouille, p. 61
Monsieur Ouine, 1943

“There's no hatred that can ever be satisfied either in this world or the next, and the hatred that one has for oneself is probably the one for which there is no forgiveness.”

Georges Bernanos book Monsieur Ouine

Aucune haine ne saurait s’assouvir en ce monde ni dans l’autre, et la haine qu’on se porte à soi-même est probablement celle entre toutes pour laquelle il n’est pas de pardon!
The curé of Fenouille to the mayor, p. 208
Monsieur Ouine, 1943

“I can now see to the bottom of my own depths, there is nothing stopping my gaze, no obstacle is in the way. And there is nothing there.”

Georges Bernanos book Monsieur Ouine

The dying Monsieur Ouine, p. 243
Monsieur Ouine, 1943

“Rather than the obsession with impurity, you'd do better to fear the nostalgia for purity.”

Georges Bernanos book Monsieur Ouine

The curé of Fenouille to Dr. Malépine, p. 213
Monsieur Ouine, 1943

“[T]he cradle is shallower than the grave.”

Georges Bernanos book Monsieur Ouine

Source: Monsieur Ouine, 1943, p.244