The Burning Souls Quotes

“We can gather all the Conferences of the world, gather by herds Heads of State, economic experts and champions of all techniques. They will weigh. They will decree.
But, basically, they will fail because they will miss the point.
The disease of the century is not in the body.
The body is sick because the soul is sick.
It was she who needed to be healed and revitalized.
The real, the big revolution to do is there.
Spiritual revolution
Or bankruptcy of the century.
The salvation of the world is in the will of the souls who believe.”
― Leon Degrelle, Almas ardiendo: notas de paz, de guerra y de exilio

“Il est doux de rêver à un idéal et de le bâtir dans sa pensée.
Mais c’est encore, à dire le vrai, fort peu de chose.
Qu’est-ce qu’un idéal qui n’est qu’un jeu, ou mettons même un rêve très pur ?
Il faut le bâtir, après cela, dans l’existence.”
― Leon Degrelle, Almas ardiendo: notas de paz, de guerra y de exilio

“L’agonie de notre temps gît là.
Le siècle ne s’effondre pas faute de soutien matériel. Jamais l’univers ne fut si riche, comblé de tant de confort, aidé par une industrialisation à ce point productrice.
Jamais il n’y eut tant de ressources ni de biens offerts.
C’est le cœur de l’homme, et lui seul, qui est en état de faillite.
C’est faute d’aimer, c’est faute de croire et de se donner, que le monde s’accable lui-même des coups qui l’assassinent.
Le siècle a voulu n’être plus que le siècle des appétits. Son orgueil l’a perdu. Il a cru aux machines, aux stocks, aux lingots, sur lesquels il régnerait en maître. Il a cru, tout autant, à la victoire des passions charnelles projetées au delà de toutes les limites, à la libération des formes les plus diverses des jouissances, sans cesse multipliées, toujours plus avilies et plus avilissantes, dotées d’une « technique » qui n’est, en somme, généralement, qu’une accumulation, sans grande imagination, d’assez pauvres vices, d’êtres vidés.”
― Leon Degrelle, Almas ardiendo: notas de paz, de guerra y de exilio

“The money, the honours, the mess of bodies, the eagerness to seize an earthly happiness, which leaks between the fingers and always escapes, has made of the human herd a pitiful horde ruining itself, tearing itself apart to find a liberation which does not exist... The desire to be first, that is to say, the desire to trample upon. The desire for purely material power, that is to say the desire to suffocate and destroy the spiritual.”
― Leon Degrelle, The Burning Souls

“What will the world know?
His blood flows slowly down His pale body.
His eyes seek both His Father and our souls.
But our souls do not shudder.
They do not cry.
They do not even see.
Christ moves on alone. Alone.
Souls sleep, are sterile, or have committed suicide.

We have received spiritual life as a gift.
We are its bearers — and our hands hang limp at our sides.
Our eyes are dry.
Our lips do not tremble.
Our hearts are like dry sand.
Our souls lie lifeless where they died.”
― Leon Degrelle, The Burning Souls

“Nations recover rapidly from financial setbacks... Great revolutions are not political or economic... When specialists put the pieces together... the material revolution is accomplished.

The real revolution is far more complicated—one which brings together not the machinery of the state, but the secret life of every soul... It is about vices and virtues, impulses toward depth and toward weakness, the desperate hopes that are so dear to us.

What lies at the bottom of a gaze...? A hidden heart. A soul... The uncertain and troubled struggle toward happiness—this is the great drama of man.

And it is there, and there alone, that the real revolution takes place.”
― Leon Degrelle, The Burning Souls

“It is the passion for wealth, the will to be powerful no matter what. It is the frenzy to be honored. It is materialism.
It is the unscrupulous gratification of instincts, which have corrupted men — and through men, institutions.
The world is more and more preoccupied with banal, material, or simply animal joys. It maintains itself only by the principle of maximizing material wealth.

Each man lives only for himself and allows a domination of life — both within his own home and within the country — by a constant egoism which has converted men into hateful, embittered, greedy wolves, or corrupt and soulless half-men.”
― Leon Degrelle, The Burning Souls

“No great work is accomplished in selfishness and pride.
Obeying is a joy because it is a form of gift, of clairvoyant gift.
Obeying is fruitful, multiplying the results ...
Human society is not formed by a cloud of fierce and fanciful mosquitoes rushing in the wind according to personal interest.
A poor people where everyone intelligently recognizes limits and communal obligations obeys and works as a team — that is a people with life.
Obedience is the highest form of the use of freedom.
To command, one must first command oneself.”
― Leon Degrelle, The Burning Souls

“The disease of the century is not in the body. The body is sick because the soul is sick.
This is what is essential, whatever it may take to cure.”
― Leon Degrelle, The Burning Souls

“Love? Why? Why love?

Human beings have barricaded themselves behind selfishness and pleasure.
Virtue has abandoned its natural song.
We laugh at our old rites.
Souls suffocate—perhaps they have already been liquidated,
their absence hidden behind the decorum of habit and convention.

Happiness has become, for man and woman,
a heap of fruit devoured in a hurry,
or bitten into—only to be discarded.
Damaged bodies.
Damaged souls.
Exhausted quickly by fleeting frenzy,
already looking for other, more exciting,
or more perverse fruits.

The air is heavy with moral and spiritual denial.
The lungs pull in vain for a breath of freshness—
like the sea spray thrown too far from the sands.
Man’s inner gardens have lost their color.
The birds no longer sing there.
Love itself is no longer given.

And besides, what is love?
The most beautiful word in the world—
reduced to a physical pastime,
instinctive, interchangeable.

The only happiness that consoles, that intoxicates,
is the happiness found in giving.
In selflessness.
The gift alone carries the flavor of eternity.
It returns to the lips of the soul
with an intangible sweetness.

Give—to have seen eyes that shine.
Give—to have been understood, touched, fulfilled.
Give—to have reached the secret fibers that weave the mysteries of sensibility.
Give—to unburden the heart,
to pour out the weight of needing to be loved.

Then the heart becomes light—
as light as pollen.
Its pleasure rises like birdsong in the night,
a burning voice lighting the darkness.

We pour forth with joy.
We have emptied this power of happiness—
which was never meant to be hoarded.
The earth cannot endlessly contain the life of its springs;
it must let them burst,
under crocuses and daffodils,
or in the crevices of green rock.

But today—
in a thousand withered wells,
the springs of life have ceased to flow.
The earth no longer pours out this gift which once swelled it.
She holds back her happiness.
She chokes.

This is the agony of our age.

The century does not fail for lack of material support.
Never before has the world been so rich,
so comfortable,
so mechanized.

And yet—it dies.

It is not wealth that is lacking.
It is not progress that is missing.

It is the heart of man—
and this alone—
which is bankrupt.

It is by a lack of love,
by a failure to believe and to give,
that the world has overwhelmed itself
with murderous blows.

This century wanted to be nothing more than
the century of appetites.

Its pride was wasted.
It believed in miracles—
not of the spirit,
but of stocks and ingots,
of wealth, of possession, of control.

It believed just as much in the liberation of carnal passions,
projected beyond all restraint—
diverse, multiplied,
more degraded, more degrading,
powered by technique—
which is, in the end, nothing
but an accumulation of impoverished vices
from emptied beings.

From his conquests—or more precisely, from his falls—
man acquired pleasures
that seemed supremely exciting at first,
but which were, in truth,
only poison,
only filth,
only falsehood.

And for this filth,
for this falsehood,
man and woman abandoned their dreams—
desecrated their bodies—
and lost their joy.

The puffs of pleasure from possession,
from flesh,
must vanish.

And when they do,
what remains is only a passion for taking,
seizing,
consuming,
driven by anger
and contempt for every obstacle—
even the stale, decaying orders that still stand
over their ransacked and rotten lives”
― Leon Degrelle, The Burning Souls