Charles Peguy famous quotes

03-30-2025

Tyranny is always better organized than freedom.
-- Charles Peguy

#Liberty #Tyranny #Organized
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.
-- Charles Peguy

#Writing #Tears #Pockets
Freedom is a system based on courage.
-- Charles Peguy

#Courage
He who does not bellow the truth when he knows the truth makes himself the accomplice of liars and forgers.
-- Charles Peguy

#Truth #Honesty #Liars
Life holds only one tragedy, ultimately: not to have been a saint.
-- Charles Peguy

#Tragedy #Saint
It is the essence of genius to make use of the simplest ideas.
-- Charles Peguy

#Essence #Ideas #Innovation
We must always tell what we see. Above all, and this is more difficult, we must always see what we see.
-- Charles Peguy

#Inspirational #Difficult
A great philosophy is not a philosophy without reproach; it is philosophy without fear.
-- Charles Peguy

#Philosophy #Great Philosophy
When a man dies, he does not just die of the disease he has: he dies of his whole life.
-- Charles Peguy

#Men #Dying #Doe
The faith that I love the best, says God, is hope.
-- Charles Peguy
The sinner is at the heart of Christianity. No one is as competent as the sinner in matters of Christianity. No one, except a saint.
-- Charles Peguy

#Heart #Saint #Matter
The references you do not verify are the good ones.
-- Charles Peguy

#Discipline #Self Discipline #Verify
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 to truth must make himself perpetually unfaithful to all the continual, successive, indefatigable renascent errors
-- Charles Peguy

#Honesty #Men #Errors
I prefer a saint with faults to a sinner with none.
-- Charles Peguy

#Self Respect #Saint #Faults
When you love someone you love him as he is.
-- Charles Peguy

#Inspirational #When You Love Someone #Someone You Love
Any father whose son raises his hand against him is guilty of having produced a son who raised his hand against him.
-- Charles Peguy

#Father #Son #Hands
One has not the right to betray even a traitor. Traitors must be fought, got betrayed.
-- Charles Peguy

#Betrayal #Betrayed #Traitor
We shall never know how many acts of cowardice have been motivated by the fear of appearing not sufficiently progressive.
-- Charles Peguy

#Courage #Progressive #Cowardice
There will be things that I do that no one will be left to understand.
-- Charles Peguy
It has never been given to a man to attain at once his happiness and his salvation.
-- Charles Peguy

#Happiness #Men #Salvation
We said that a single injustice, a single crime, a single illegality, particularly if it is officially recorded, confirmed, a single wrong to humanity, a single wrong to justice and to right, particularly if it is universally, legally, nationally, commodiously accepted, that a single crime shatters and is sufficient to shatter the whole social pact, the whole social contract, that a single legal crime, a single dishonorable act will bring about the loss of ones honor, the dishonor of a whole people. It is a touch of gangrene that corrupts the entire body.
-- Charles Peguy

#Loss #People #Justice
What is most contrary to salvation is not sin but habit.
-- Charles Peguy

#Sin #Habit #Salvation
It is better to have a war for justice than peace in injustice.
-- Charles Peguy

#Peace #War #Justice
It is innocence that is full and experience that is empty. It is innocence that wins and experience that loses.
-- Charles Peguy

#Winning #Innocence #Empty
The life of an honest man must be a perpetual infidelity.
-- Charles Peguy

#Honesty #Men #Infidelity
Love is rarer than genius itself. And friendship is rarer than love.
-- Charles Peguy

#Real #Real Friends #Love Is
Homer is new this morning, and perhaps nothing is as old as today's newspaper.
-- Charles Peguy

#Morning #Today #Newspapers
Everything begins in mysticism and ends in politics.
-- Charles Peguy

#Ends #Mysticism
The classical artist can be recognized by his sincerity, the romantic by his laborious insincerity.
-- Charles Peguy

#Artist #Sincerity #Insincerity

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