Quotes by
Anatole France |
1844-1924 , French writer, Nobel 1921
Pseudonym of Jacques-Anatole-François Thibault. French poet, journalist, and novelist. Ironic and skeptical , he was considered in his day the ideal French man of letters. A member of the Académie française , he won the 1921 Nobel Prize in Literature in recognition of his literary achievements. Best known works: Le Crime de Sylvestre Bonnard (1881), La Rotisserie de la Reine Pedauque (1893), La Revolte des Anges (Revolt of the Angels, 1914), L'Île des Pingouins (Penguin Island, 1908).
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Quotations
| • | In its majestic equality, the law forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets and steal loaves of bread. 11 |
| • | A person is never happy except at the price of some ignorance. 8 |
| • | The good critic is one who tells of his mind’s adventures among masterpieces. 6 |
| • | For the majority of people, though they do not know what to do with this life, long for another that shall have no end. 5 |
| • | True education is the ability to discern the difference between what you do know and what you don't. 4 |
| • | The books are the opium of the West. 3 |
| • | He flattered himself on being a man without any prejudices; and this pretension itself is a very great prejudice. 3 |
| • | Man is so made that he can only find relaxation from one kind of labor by taking up another. 3 |
| • | A dictionary is merely the universe arranged in alphabetical order. 3 |
| • | You learn to speak by speaking, to study by studying, to run by running, to work by working; in just the same way, you learn to love by loving. 1 |
| • | It is human nature to think wisely and to act in an absurd fashion. |
| • | Christianity has done a lot for love by making it a sin. |
| • | In art as in love, instinct is enough. |
| • | To accomplish great things we must not only act, but also dream; not only plan, but also believe. |
| • | Only men who are not interested in women are interested in women's clothes. Men who like women never notice what they wear. |
| • | All the historical books which contain no lies are extremely tedious. |
| • | I prefer the errors of enthusiasm to the wisdom of indifference. |
| • | It is well for the heart to be naive and for the mind not to be. |
| • | Stupidity is far more dangerous than evil, for evil takes a break from time to time, stupidity does not. |
| • | Man is a rational animal. He can think up a reason for anything he wants to believe. |
| • | If the path be beautiful, let us not ask where it leads. |
| • | If fifty million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing. |
| • | We have never heard the devil’s side of the story, God wrote all the book. |
| • | A woman without breasts is like a bed without pillows. |
| • | Intelligent women always marry fools. |
| • | I thank fate for having made me born poor. Poverty taught me the true value of the gifts useful to life. |
| • | The first virtue of all really great men is that they are sincere. They eradicate hypocrisy from their hearts. |
| • | The future is a convenient place for dreams. |
| • | The books that everybody admires are those that nobody reads. |
| • | Good angels are fallible – they sin every day and fall from Heaven like flies. |
| • | Nature, in her indifference, makes no distinction between good and evil. |
| • | An education which does not cultivate the will is an education that depraves the mind. |
| • | People who have no weaknesses are terrible; there is no way of taking advantage of them. |
| • | Innocence most often is a good fortune and not a virtue. |
| • | You become a good writer just as you become a good joiner: by planing down your sentences. |
| • | The Kingdom of Heaven is a military autocracy and there is no public opinion in it. |
| • | It’s not by amusing oneself that one learns. |
| • | Until one has loved an animal, a part of one's soul remains unawakened. |
| • | Never lend books, for no one ever returns them; the only books I have in my library are books that other folks have lent me. |
| • | We chase dreams and embrace shadows. |
| • | All the good writers of confessions, from Augustine onwards, are men who are still a little in love with their sins. |
