Quotes by Charles Peguy

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

“We must always tell what we see. Above all, and this is more difficult, we must always see what we see.”

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

“A word is not the same with one writer as with another. One tears it from his guts. The other pulls it out of his overcoat pocket.”

“Short of genius a rich man cannot even imagine poverty.”

“The honest man must be a perpetual renegade, the life of an honest man a perpetual infidelity. For the man who wishes to remain faithful must take himself perpetually unfaithful to all the continual, successive, indefatigable, renascent errors.”

“Homer is new this morning, and perhaps nothing is as old as todays newspaper”

“Any father whose son raises his hand against him is guilty of having produced a son who raised his hand against him.”

“Freedom is a system based on courage.”

“Under conditions of tyranny it is far easier to act than to think”

“Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.”

“The ideal tyranny is that which is ignorantly self-administered by its victims. The most perfect slaves are, therefore, those which blissfully and unawaredly enslave themselves.”

When a man dies he does not just die of the disease he has: he dies of his whole life.

It has never been given to a man to attain at once his happiness and his salvation.

One must always tell what one sees. Above all which is more difficult one must always see what one sees.

A great philosophy is not a philosophy without reproach it is philosophy without fear.

Short of genius a rich man cannot imagine poverty.

It is the essence of genius to make use of the simplest ideas.

A word is not the same with one writer as with another. One tears it from his guts. The other pulls it out of his overcoat pocket.

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