Anatole France Literature Quotations

The duty of literature is to note what counts, and to light up what is suited to the light. If it ceases to choose and to love, it becomes like a woman who gives herself without preference.

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

Of all the sexual aberrations, chastity is the strangest.

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

I prefer the folly of enthusiasm to the indifference of wisdom.

Silence is the wit of fools.

I thank fate for having made me born poor. Poverty taught me the true value of the gifts useful to life.

Innocence most often is a good fortune and not a virtue.

Nature has no principles. She makes no distinction between good and evil.

The truth is that life is delicious, horrible, charming, frightful, sweet, bitter, and that is everything.

Chance is perhaps the pseudonym of God when he did not want to sign.