Charles Péguy quotes

Charles Péguy was a French poet, essayist, and editor known for his philosophical and spiritual writings. His works often explored themes of faith, patriotism, and social justice. He became an influential figure in early 20th-century French literature and was killed in World War I. Here are 18 of his quotes:

Tyranny is always better organised than freedom.

Charles Péguy

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

Charles Péguy

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 Péguy

The faith that I love the best, says God, is hope.

Charles Péguy

There will be things that I do that no one will be left to understand.

Charles Péguy

Homer is new this morning, and perhaps nothing is as old as today's newspaper.

Charles Péguy

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

Charles Péguy

I am so resplendent in my creation. That in order really not to see me these poor people would have to be blind.

Charles Péguy

In my servant the ant, my tiny servant, who hoards greedily like a miser. Who works like one unhappy and who has no break and who has no rest.

Charles Péguy

The life of the honest man must be an apostasy and a perpetual desertion. The honest man must be a perpetual renegade, the life of an honest man must be a perpetual infidelity. For the man who wishes to remain faithful to truth must make himself continually unfaithful to all the continual, successive, indefatigable renascent errors. And the man who wishes to remain faithful to justice must make himself continually unfaithful to inexhaustibly triumphant injustices.

Charles Péguy

Faith is a loyal Wife. Charity is a Mother. An ardent mother, noble-hearted. Or an older sister who is like a mother. Hope is a little girl, nothing at all.

Charles Péguy

These bygone workmen did not serve, they worked. They had an absolute honor, which is honor proper. A chair rung had to be well made. That was an understood thing. That was the first thing. It wasn't that the chair rung had to be well made for the salary or on account of the salary. It wasn't that it was well made for the boss, nor for connoisseurs, nor for the boss' clients. It had to be well made itself, in itself, for itself, in its very self. A tradition coming, springing from deep within the race, a history, an absolute, an honor, demanded that this chair rung be well made. Every part of the chair which could not be seen was just as perfectly made as the parts which could be seen. This was the selfsame principle of cathedrals. ... There was no question of being seen or of not being seen. It was the innate being of work which needed to be well done.

Charles Péguy

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

Charles Péguy

Freedom is a system based on courage.

Charles Péguy

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 Péguy

Work for them was joy itself and the deep root of their being. And the reason of their being. There was an incredible honor in work, the most beautiful of all the honors. ... We have known this devotion to l'ouvrage bien faite, to the good job, carried and maintained to its most exacting claims. ... Today, what remains of all this? How has ... the only people that loved to work ... been transformed into one which in the workyard takes the greatest pains not to lift a hand?

Charles Péguy