Jean Guitton Quotes

In Giovanna, purity was more than a virtue. It was her mark, her reason for existing and her implicit glory, her resemblance to the mother of Christ. Being a country girl, accustomed to seeing life in all its gestures, she probably had very accurate knowledge of purity in the physical sense. In the countryside, ignorance is never what the 19th-century bourgeoisie falsely calls innocence. And when, at the age of thirteen, Joan gave her virginity to God during the angel's first visit, she knew clearly what it meant. (p. 30)

Joan puts God's will above her virginity. She says that she “has offered her virginity as a vow for as long as God pleases”. This concern for the hierarchy of values, this idea of “God first”, is always evident in her. Joan is a virgin because God inspired her to be so; she is not a virgin of her own free will or choice. (pp. 34-35)

Jewish thought was oriented towards the future. In the history of the past, it sought the image of what did not yet exist.

If the Church has sometimes been against science, the cause lies in its misreading of the Bible.

Joan is not a theologian; in fact, she cannot tell A from B. However, listening to her answers during her trial, we sense in her a theological intelligence, a ready ability to resolve cases brought before her conscience, which, if developed, would have made her equal to the greatest minds. (p. 9)

Paul VI told me that the prayer he recited every morning was: “My God, call me back to You, call me back to You, I can't take it anymore”. I believe that all popes recite this prayer, even John Paul II.

After about forty centuries of oral civilisation, the Word is an inflated currency.

The atheist confirms faith. And like a guinea pig that confirms my thesis or my faith in God.

Joan of Arc possesses more genius than talent, more heroism than courage, more intuition than intelligence, more immediacy than endurance and, if we may say so, more glory than grace. That is why she seems more angelic than human, a traveller from another world, parachuted into this one. (p. 7)

For a Christian, what we call life is a preparation for what we call the “afterlife”, the other life.

(Referring to Marthe Robin) was simple.... What prevailed in Marthe was her capacity for sacrifice, in imitation of Christ.... With simple words, she aroused in us one of those rare, sudden, sweet, somewhat melancholic and yet radiant emotions that make you aware of your destiny.

Atheism is not only complicated and rare, it is also a recent phenomenon, a peculiarity supported by few and only recently in certain Western intellectual circles.

Beauty is a splendour that must detach itself from those who possess it without them noticing and without returning to them.

I find that at twent it is easy to be a hero, a saint, an extraordinary man. I believe, however, that at ninety it is very difficult to live up to the moment.

Believing in God means believing in an incomprehensible being whose ability to listen is known. That is what kneeling means.