Quote of the Day (Francois Mauriac, on a ‘Close Correspondence Between Individual and Collective Crimes’)

“The mystery of evil—there are no two ways of approaching it. We must either deny evil or we must accept it as it appears both within ourselves and without — in our individual lives, that of our passions, as well as in the history written with the blood of men by power-hungry empires. I have always believed that there is a close correspondence between individual and collective crimes, and, journalist that I am, I do nothing but decipher from day to day in the horror of political history the visible consequences of that invisible history which takes place in the obscurity of the heart. We pay dearly for the evidence that evil is evil, we who live under a sky where the smoke of crematories is still drifting. We have seen them devour under our own eyes millions of innocents, even children. And history continues in the same manner. The system of concentration camps has struck deep roots in old countries where Christ has been loved, adored, and served for centuries. We are watching with horror how that part of the world in which man is still enjoying his human rights, where the human mind remains free, is shrinking under our eyes.”—French novelist (and lifelong Catholic) Francois Mauriac (1885-1970), Nobel Literature Prize acceptance speech, delivered on Dec. 10, 1952, in Stockholm, Sweden

Quote of the Day (Francois Mauriac, on Winter in the French Countryside)

“Winter in the country among the fields does not have any of the cloistered or even shrouded feeling I had imagined. The countryside in no way reminds one of animals that hibernate until the spring. Everything stays awake. The smell of the buds betrays a snap in gestation. The comradeship of hunger unites the birds who give no thought to love. Every morning, a pipit flies against my bedroom window and pecks at it furiously. I see her soft yellow breast from close at hand. She is not trying to get in, because the open window does not attract her. Is she, like the lark, tempted by the mirror, obsessed by the mystery of the transparent?”—French novelist and Nobel Literature laureate Francois Mauriac (1885-1970), “On Nature,” in Second Thoughts: Reflections on Literature and on Life (1961)

Spiritual Quote of the Day (Francois Mauriac, on ‘Idolatries of the State, of Race, and of Blood’)

“Today, to the extent that the world is de-Christianized and under new forms returns to the old idolatries of the state, of race, and of blood, the authentic Christian is scarcely less isolated than were the first Christians under the empire of the Caesars.  Many of the early Christians did not protect themselves any more than we do against the corruption which streamed in on them from all sides. Habit prevents us from being sensitive to the contradictions between the Cross and the world that is still so indomitable so many centuries after the first Christians began to measure their strength against paganism.” —French Nobel Literature laureate (and lifelong Catholic) Francois Mauriac (1885-1970), The Son of Man, translated by Bernard Murchland (1958)

Quote of the Day (Francois Mauriac, on the ‘Danger in Priestly Power’)

“In Christian countries and in the ages of faith, there has always been a danger in priestly power. Just as Caesar is tempted to use his power to dominate the people, so Peter is tempted to use his power to dominate Caesar; this has in fact been our history for two thousand years. The duel of the Priesthood and the Empire has always involved a complicity. Shall we be scandalized by this? We must remember that grace builds on human nature; it does not change it. The will to power inherent in human nature makes use of everything, and even of Christ who is in some sense a victim of it. It was necessary that it be so in spite of all the risks. It was necessary that the words ‘thy sins are forgiven thee’ be pronounced as many times as a sinner expressed his repentance to a man who represented Christ. In this way Christ has become a prisoner of his own creature.”—French Nobel Literature laureate (and lifelong Catholic) Francois Mauriac (1885-1970), The Son of Man, translated by Bernard Murchland (1958)

Quote of the Day (Francois Mauriac, on the Incarnation)

“The gentle child shivers with cold on the edge of a criminal world while angels promise peace to men of good will—a peace that can be discovered only after a full measure of suffering; but in the shadows of his birthplace Herod’s soldiers sharpen their knives for a slaughter of innocents that will apparently never end.”—Francois Mauriac, The Son of Man, translated by Bernard Murchland (1958)