Anatole France Quotes

Play is hand-to-hand encounter with Fate. ~ Anatole France

What frightens us most in a madman is his sane conversation. ~ Anatole France

You think you are dying for your country; you die for the industrialists. ~ Anatole France

This book bore the label R>3214 VIII/2. And this painful truth was suddenly borne in upon the mind of Monsieur Sariette: to wit, that the most scientific system of numbering will not help to find a book if the book is no longer in its place. ~ Anatole France

So long as society is founded on injustice, the function of the laws will be to defend injustice. And the more unjust they are the more respectable they will seem. ~ Anatole France

They did not understand that war, which trained courage and founded the cities of barbarous and ignorant men, brings to victor himself but ruin and misery, and is nothing but a horrible and stupid crime when nations are united together by common bonds of art, science, and trade. ~ Anatole France

Man is a rational animal. He can think up a reason for anything he wants to believe. ~ Anatole France

We have drugs to make women speak, but none to keep them silent. ~ Anatole France

his life was gently gliding along like a stream that reflects the heaven and fertilizes the fields. ~ Anatole France

The impotence of God is infinite. ~ Anatole France

A simple style is like white light. Although complex, it does not appear to be so. ~ Anatole France

I ought not to fear to survive my own people so long as there are men in the world; for there are always some whom one can love. ~ Anatole France

Theologians and philosophers, who make God the creator of Nature and the architect of the Universe, reveal Him to us as an illogical and unbalanced Being. They declare He is benevolent because they are afraid of Him, but they are forced to admit the truth that His ways are vicious and beyond understanding. They attribute a malignity to Him seldom to be found in any human being. And that is how they get human beings to worship Him. For our miserable species would never lavish worship on a just and benevolent God from whom they had nothing to fear. ~ Anatole France

It is not customary to love what one has ~ Anatole France

To imagine is everything, to know is nothing at all. ~ Anatole France

It is only the poor who are forbidden to beg. ~ Anatole France

Chance is the pseudonym God uses when He'd rather not sign His own name. ~ Anatole France

All the good writers of confessions, from Augustine onwards, are men who are still a little in love with their sins. ~ Anatole France

Lovers who love truly do not write down their happiness. ~ Anatole France

We have never heard the devil's side of the story, God wrote all the book. ~ Anatole France

The best sentence? The shortest. ~ Anatole France

Yet, every now and then, there would pass a young girl, slender, fair and desirable, arousing in young men a not ignoble desire to possess her, and stirring in old men regrets for ecstasy not seized and now forever past. ~ Anatole France

He left Penguinia impoverished and depopulated. The flower of the insula perished in his wars. At the time of his fall there were left in our country none but the hunchbacks and cripples from whom we are descended. But he gave us glory." "He made you pay dearly for it!" "Glory never costs too much," replied my guide. ~ Anatole France

Ignorance is the necessary condition, i do not say of happiness, but of life itself. If we knew everything, we could not endure existence a single hour. The sentiments that make it sweet to us, or at any rate tolerable, spring from a falsehood, and are fed on illusions.
If, like God, a man possessed the truth, the sole and perfect truth, and once let it escape out of his hands, the world would be annihilated there and then, and the universe melt away instantly like a shadow. ~ Anatole France

The Arab who built himself a hut with marbles from the temple of Palmyra is more philosophical than all the curators of the museums of London, Paris, and Munich. ~ Anatole France

He moved on from Anatole France to the eighteenth-century philosophers, though not to Rousseau. Perhaps this was because one side of him - the side easily moved by passion - was too close to Rousseau. Instead, he approached the author of 'Candide', who was closer to another side of him - the cool and richly intellectual side.
At twenty-nine, life no longer held any brightness for him, but Voltaire supplied him with man-made wings.
Spreading these man-made wings, he soared with ease into the sky. The higher he flew, the farther below him sank the joys and sorrows of a life bathed in the light of intellect. Dropping ironies and smiles upon the shabby towns below, he climbed through the open sky, straight for the sun - as if he had forgotten about that ancient Greek who plunged to his death in the ocean when his man-made wings were singed by the sun. ~ Ryunosuke Akutagawa

For knowledge to be digested, it must be absorbed with relish," wrote Anatole France. ~ Anonymous

One thing above all gives charm to men's thoughts, and this is unrest. A mind that is not uneasy irritates and bores me. ~ Anatole France

An education isn't how much you have committed to memory, or even how much you know. It's being able to differentiate between what you do know and what you don't. ~ Anatole France

I have always preferred the folly of the passions to the wisdom of indifference. But just because my own passions are not of that sort which burst out with violence to devastate and kill, the common mind is not aware of their existence. Nevertheless, I am greatly moved by them at times, and it has more than once been my fate to lose my sleep for the sake of a few pages written by some forgotten monk or printed by some humble apprentice of Peter Schöffer. And if these fierce enthusiasms are slowly being quenched in me, it is only because I am being slowly quenched myself. Our passions are ourselves. My old books are Me. I am just as old and thumb-worn as they are. ~ Anatole France

Without lies, humanity would perish of despair and boredom ~ Anatole France

There are no bad books any more than there are ugly women. ~ Anatole France

It is by believing in roses that you make them bloom. ~ Anatole France

We find it hard to picture to ourselves the state of mind of a man of older days who firmly believed that the Earth was the centre of the Universe, and that all the heavenly bodies revolved around it. He could feel beneath his feet the writhings of the damned amid the flames; very likely he had seen with his own eyes and smelt with his own nostrils the sulphurous fumes of Hell escaping from some fissure in the rocks. Looking upwards, he beheld ... the incorruptible firmament, wherein the stars hung like so many lamps. ~ Anatole France

Suffering - how divine it is, how misunderstood! We owe to it all that is good in us, all that gives value to life; we owe to it pity, we owe to it courage, we owe to it all the virtues. ~ Anatole France

But my foreknowledge must not encroach upon their free will. "In order not to impair human liberty, I will be ignorant of what I know, I will thicken upon my eyes the veils I have pierced, and in my blind clearsightedness I will let myself be surprised by what I have foreseen. ~ Anatole France

What we call strategy is mainly just crossing rivers on bridges and passing mountains though cols. ~ Anatole France

Man is summed up in Art. All the rest is moonshine. ~ Anatole France

The sadness of churches at night moves me; I feel in them the grandeur of nothingness. ~ Anatole France

It is good to collect things, it is better to take walks. ~ Anatole France

Each one dreams the dream of life in his own way. I have dreamed it in my library; and when the hour shall come in which I must leave this world, may it please God to take me from my ladder - from before my shelves of books! ... ~ Anatole France

It is well for the heart to be naive and the mind not to be. ~ Anatole France

To clothe the penguins is a very serious business. At present when a penguin desires a penguin he knows precisely what he desires and his lust is limited by an exact knowledge of its object. At this moment two or three couples of penguins are making love on the beach. See with what simplicity! No one pays any attention and the actors themselves do not seem to be greatly preoccupied. But when the female penguins are clothed, the male penguin will not form so exact a notion of what it is that attracts him to them. His indeterminate desires will fly out into all sorts of dreams and illusions; in short, father, he will know love and its mad torments. And all the time the female penguins will cast down their eyes and bite their lips, and take on airs as if they kept a treasure under their clothes! . . . what a pity! ~ Anatole France

There are very honest people who do not think that they have had a bargain unless they have cheated a merchant. ~ Anatole France

Of all the ways of defining man, the worst is the one which makes him out to be a rational animal. ~ Anatole France

To accomplish great things, we must dream as well as act. ~ Anatole France

Ah! Yes, the truth, that ingenious concoction of desirability of appearance. ~ Anatole France

M. Proust was more severe than M. de Caillavet on Anatole France: "He was selfish and supercilious. He had read so much that he had left his heart in other people's books, and all that remained was dryness. One day I asked him how he came to know so much. He said, 'Not by being such a handsome young man as you. I wasn't in demand, and instead of going out I studied and learned'. ~ Celeste Albaret

Ignorance and error are necessary to life, like bread and water. ~ Anatole France

The law, in its majestic impartiality, forbids the rich and poor alike to sleep under the bridges of Paris. ~ Anatole France

I do not know any reading more easy, more fascinating, more delightful than a catalogue. ~ Anatole France

Armenia is dying, but it will survive. The little blood that is left is precious blood that will give birth to a heroic generation. A nation that does not want to die, does not die. April 9, 1916 Sorbonne ~ Anatole France

The law in its majesty prohibits rich and poor alike from sleeping under bridges. ~ Anatole France

A person is never happy except at the price of some ignorance. ~ Anatole France

The law ... allows rich as well as poor to sleep under bridges. ~ Anatole France

Good angels are fallible ... they sin every day and fall from Heaven like flies. ~ Anatole France

Word-carpentry is like any other kind of carpentry: you must join your sentences smoothly. ~ Anatole France

Until you have loved an animal, part of your soul will have remained dormant. ~ Anatole France

And what, above all, I blame in you is that you have not married in compliance with the law and given children to the Republic, as every good citizen is bound to do. ~ Anatole France

Unhappiness does make people look stupid. ~ Anatole France

It is only the poor who pay cash, and that not from virtue, but because they are refused credit. ~ Anatole France

I prefer the errors of enthusiasm to the indifference of wisdom. ~ Anatole France

It is in the ability to deceive oneself that the greatest talent is shown. ~ Anatole France

For every monarchy overthrown the sky becomes less brilliant, because it loses a star. A republic is ugliness set free. ~ Anatole France

But don't you ever tell me the Revolution will bring equality, because men'll never be equal. It's just not possible. They can turn the country upside down and inside out, there'll always be the big people and the little people, the fat ones and the thin ones. ~ Anatole France

Devout believers are safeguarded in a high degree against the risk of certain neurotic illnesses; their acceptance of the universal neurosis spares them the task of constructing a personal one. ~ Anatole France

as regards ownership the right of the first occupier is uncertain and badly founded. The right of conquest, on the other hand, rests on more solid foundations. It is the only right that receives respect since it is the only one that makes itself respected. ~ Anatole France

War will disappear only when men shall take no part whatever in violence and shall be ready to suffer every persecution that their abstention will bring them. It is the only way to abolish war. ~ Anatole France

Dog! When we first met on the highway of life, we came from the two poles of creation ... What can be the meaning of the obscure love for me that has sprung up in your heart? ~ Anatole France

That man is prudent who neither hopes nor fears anything from the uncertain events of the future. ~ Anatole France

Truth possesses within herself a penetrating force, unknown alike to error and falsehood. I say 'truth' and you understand my meaning. For the beautiful words truth and justice need not to be defined in order to be understood in their true sense. ~ Anatole France

There, in a livid light, the demons tormented the souls of the damned. The souls preserved the appearance of the bodies which had held them, and even wore some rags of clothing. These souls seemed peaceful in the midst of their torments. ~ Anatole France

The first virtue of all really great men is that they are sincere. They eradicate hypocrisy from their hearts. ~ Anatole France

A woman without breasts is like a bed without pillows. ~ Anatole France

God, conquered, will become Satan; Satan, conquering, will become God. May the fates spare me this terrible lot; I love the Hell which formed my genius. I love the Earth where I have done some good, if it be possible to do any good in this fearful world where beings live but by rapine. ~ Anatole France

For you can always tell the gods by their appetite. ~ Anatole France

Time deals gently only with those who take it gently. ~ Anatole France

The whole art of teaching is only the art of awakening the natural curiosity of the mind for the purpose of satisfying it afterwards. ~ Anatole France

Take care, father," said Bulloch gently, "that what you call murder and robbery may not really be war and conquest, those sacred foundations of empires, those sources of all human virtues and all human greatness. ~ Anatole France

It is good to collect things, but it is better to go on walks. ~ Anatole France

I awaited Signor Polizzi's reply with ill-contained impatience. I could not even remain quiet; I would make sudden nervous gestures - open books and violent close them again. One day I happened to upset a book with my elbow - a volume of Moréri. Hamilcar, who was washing himself, suddenly stopped, and looked angrily at me, with his paw over his ear. Was this the tumultuous existence he must expect under my roof? Had there not been a tacit understanding between us that we should live a peaceful life? I had broken the covenant. ~ Anatole France

Of all sexual aberrations, chastity is the strangest. ~ Anatole France

The power of love itself weakens and gradually becomes lost with age, like all the other energies of man. ~ Anatole France

I am a physician. I keep a drug-shop of lies. I give relief, consolation. Can one console and relieve without lying? ... Only women and doctors know how necessary and how helpful lies are to men. ~ Anatole France

When a history book contains no lies it is always tedious. ~ Anatole France

An education which does not cultivate the will is an education that depraves the mind. ~ Anatole France

The faculty of doubting is rare among men. A few choice spirits carry the germs of it in them, but these do not develop without training. ~ Anatole France

For the majority of people, though they do not know what to do with this life, long for another that shall have no end. ~ Anatole France

Sometimes one day in a difference place gives you more than ten years of a life at home. ~ Anatole France

The greatest virtue of man is perhaps curiosity.
ربما يكون الفضول هو اعظم فضائل البشر ~ Anatole France

Determination. To accomplish great things, we must not only act, but also dream. Not only plan, but also believe. ~ Anatole France

Silence is the wit of fools. ~ Anatole France

All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another. ~ Anatole France

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. ~ Anatole France

A people living under the perpetual menace of war and invasion is very easy to govern. It demands no social reform. It does not haggle over expenditures for armaments and military equipment. It pays without discussion, it ruins itself, and that is an excellent thing for the syndicates of financiers and manufacturers for whom patriotic terrors are an abundant source of gain. ~ Anatole France

What can be more foolish than to think that all this rare fabric of heaven and earth could come by chance? ~ Anatole France

Justice is the sanction of established injustice. ~ Anatole France

When a thing has been said and said well, have no scruple. Take it and copy it. ~ Anatole France

He prided himself on being a man without prejudice, and this itself is a very great prejudice. ~ Anatole France

Stupidity is far more dangerous than evil, for evil takes a break from time to time, stupidity does not. ~ Anatole France