He was raised in a strict Roman Catholic family and educated at a religious seminary in Toulouse before attending the Collège Stanislas de Paris, where he met Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly—who became his lifelong friend.

After graduating from Collége Stanislas in 1831, Guérin decided against a traditional religious life and instead went to Brittany to enter a radical Christian socialist society founded by Hugues Felicité Robert de Lamennais.

He partially recovered from his illness in 1838 and in November of that year agreed to an arranged marriage with Caroline de Gervain, a noble lady of some fortune.

[4] In 1840, a memorial of Maurice de Guérin was published in the Revue des deux Mondes by George Sand, to which she added two fragments of his writings—one a composition in prose, and the other a short poem.

[3] Reliquiae, a work which included Guérin's Le Centaure in addition to his journal and a number of his letters and several poems, was edited by G. S. Trébutien, accompanied with a biographical and critical notice by Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve and published in 1861.