Mongo Beti

"Tell them that Jesus Christ and the Reverend Father are all one.' Especially when our village children, looking at the picture of Christ surrounded by boys, were astonished at his likeness to our Father. Same beard, same soutane, same cord around the waist. And they cried out, 'But Jesus Christ is just like the Father!' And the Father assured them that Christ and himself were all one. And since then all the boys of my village call the Father 'Jesus Christ"

"It seems the more money they have the less they think of God."

"And why are they better Christians along the roads, unless it's because they are constantly exposed to the exactions of soldiers and chiefs, or the demands of forced labour? Here they know nothing of all these woes. If God would only send them a warning."

"When the daughter dies, the son-in-law dies."

"....evangelizing the blacks is like taking an old water jug and trying to turn it into an amphora?..."

"But it's when we pity someone that we feel closest to them, and just now I certainly love him more than my own father."

"It was impossible for devils to live in men; men do as they please and the devil has nothing to do with it."

"No one is interested any more, except the women. Only the women have religion in their blood; the men are completely indifferent. They claim that there's no difference between a Greek trader and a priest......."

"I am the earth she rests on … By herself she is nothing but a dead leaf that has broken loose from the tree. For all her flattering and gyrations, in the end she cannot prevent herself falling to the ground."

"In our country what Europeans describe as ‘adultery’ (a word loaded with heavy Puritanism) doesn’t on the whole provoke really violent reactions, even if people aren’t entirely indifferent to such peccadilloes."

"The seriousness with which any adultery is regarded is in exact proportion to the physical or social ‘distance’ between the two tribes – those, that is, of the cuckolded husband and the intrusive lover respectively."

"The best religion in the world remained that of St John of Kala, which consisted of two basic commandments: When you are thirsty, drink anything except water; and never forgo any occasion for making love, whatever time of day it may be (Sundays included)."