S'il y a un Dieu, l'athéisme doit lui sembler une moindre injure que la religion." - Meaning and context.">
If there is a God, atheism must strike Him as less of an insult than religion.
• January 24, 1868; translation from Robert Baldick (ed. and trans.) Pages from the Goncourt Journal (London: Oxford University Press, 1962) p. 135.
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S'il y a un Dieu, l'athéisme doit lui sembler une moindre injure que la religion.

— Goncourt brothers

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "S'il y a un Dieu, l'athéisme doit lui sembler une moindre injure que la religion." in the context of "If there is a God, atheism must strike Him as less of an insult than religion.
• January 24, 1868; translation from Robert Baldick (ed. and trans.) Pages from the Goncourt Journal (London: Oxford University Press, 1962) p. 135." to mean that wisdom is timeless.

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Source: Wikiquote: "Goncourt brothers" (Quotes, Journals: Quotations in the original French are cited from Journal des Goncourt (Paris: Bibliothèque-Charpentier, 1888-1896), 9 vols.) The 'What it means' explanation text was generated by Google Gemini Flash (accessed January 18, 2026). https://gemini.google.com/app
Goncourt brothers

About Goncourt brothers

The brothers Edmond Louis Antoine Huot de Goncourt (May 26 1822 – July 16 1896) and Jules Alfred Huot de Goncourt (December 17 1830 – June 20 1870) were French writers who, in a lifelong collaboration, produced a number of histories, novels and works of art criticism. They are now chiefly famous for their Journals, kept from 1851 to 1895.