Bernard Quotes
I can't turn your soul on. Leave me those feelings; and you can take away the voice and the face. They are not you.
Thus, I blush to add, you can not be a philosopher and a good man, though you may be a philosopher and a great one.
A book is like a child: it is easier to bring it into the world than to control it when it is launched there.
Everyone can see that the people who hunt are the right people and the people who don't are the wrong ones.
Love is an appetite which, like all other appetites, is destroyed for the moment by its gratification.
That older and greater church to which I belong: the church where the oftener you laugh the better, because by laughter only can you destroy evil without malice
A woman whose face looked as if it had been made of sugar and someone had licked it.
Well, upon my soul! You are not ashamed to stand there and confess yourself a disgusting drunkard.
The fact that we can become accustomed to anything, however disgusting at first, makes it necessary to examine carefully everything we have become accustomed to.
If you can say a thing with one stroke, unanswerably you have style; if not, you are at best a marchande de plaisir; a decorative litt
Financiers live in a world of illusion. They count on something which they call the capital of the country, which has no existence.
I do not want actors and actresses to understand my plays. That is not necessary. If they will only pronounce the correct sounds I can guarantee the results.
Faith in reason as a prime motor is no longer the criterion of the sound mind, any more than faith in the Bible is the criterion of righteous intention.
We are the masters at the moment, and not only at the moment, but for a very long time to come.
Nature holds no brief for the human experiment; it must stand or fall by its results.
Money is the counter that enables life to be lived socially; it is life as truly as sovereigns and banknotes are money.
I assume that to prevent illness in later life, you should never have been born at all.
If the announcer can produce the impression that he is a gentleman, he may pronounce as he pleases.
You propound a complicated arithmetical problem: say cubing a number containing four digits. Give me a slate and half an hour's time, and I can produce a wrong answer.
Literature is like any other trade; you will never sell anything unless you go to the right shop.
You must not suppose, because I am a man of letters, that I never tried to earn an honest living.
Besides, do any of us understand what we are doing? If we did, would we ever do it?
The only way for a woman to provide for herself decently is for her to be good to some man that can afford to be good to her.
My father must have had some elementary education for he could read and write and keep accounts inaccurately
People must not be forced to adopt me as their favourite author, even for their own good.
What is wrong with the prosaic Englishman is what is wrong with the prosaic men of all countries: stupidity.
This is my father. Try what you can with him! He won't listen to me, because he remembers what a fool I was when I was a baby.
I am a sort of collector of religions: and the curious thing is that I find I can believe in them all.
Well, sir, you never can tell. That's a principle in life with me, sir, if you'll excuse my having such a thing.
If only for a half hour a day, a child should do something serviceable to the community
He said that private practice in medicine ought to be put down by law. When I asked him why, he said that private doctors were ignorant licensed murders.
He who has nothing to assert has no style and can have none: he who has something to assert will go as far in power of style as its momentousness and his conviction will carry him
The conversion of Paul was no conversion at all; it was Paul who converted the religion that has raised one man above sin and death.
Communism, being the lay form of Catholicism, and indeed meaning the same thing, has never had any lack of chaplains.
The salvation of the world depends on the men who will not take evil good-humouredly, and whose laughter destroys the fool instead of encouraging him.
The domestic career is no more natural to all women than the military career is natural to all men.
Human misery is so appalling nowadays that if we allowed ourselves to dwell on it we should only add imaginary miseries of our own to the real miseries of others without doing them any good.
Vulgarity is a necessary part of a complete author's equipment; and the clown is sometimes the best part of the circus.
If associations to control burglary and murder were tolerated we should take it for granted that the members should all be burglers and murderers.