Anatole France Men Quotations

What men call civilization is the condition of present customs; what they call barbarism, the condition of past ones.

A good critic is the man who describes his adventures among masterpieces.

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.

Universal peace will be realized, not because man will become better, but because a new order of things, a new science, new economic necessities, will impose peace.

The wonder is, not that the field of stars is so vast, but that man has measured it.

The man of science multiples the points of contact between man and nature.

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

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

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

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

For a man’s life would become intolerable, if he knew what was going to happen to him. He would be made aware of future evils, and would suffer their agonies in advance, while he would get no joy of present blessings since he would know how they would end. Ignorance is the necessary condition of human happiness, and it has to be admitted that on the whole mankind observes that condition well. We are almost entirely ignorant of ourselves; absolutely of others. In ignorance, we find our bliss; in illusions, our happiness.

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

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.

No government ought to be without censors; and where the press is free, no one ever will. Chance is the pseudonym of God when he did not want to sign.

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

Lack of understanding is a great power. Sometimes it enables men to conquer the world.

Men are not created to know, men are not created to understand ... and our illusions increase with our knowledge.

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

In truth man is made rather to eat ices than to pore over old texts.

Ugly women may be naturally quite as capricious as pretty ones; but as they are never petted and spoiled, and as no allowances are made for them, they soon find themselves obliged either to suppress their whims or to hide them.

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

Intelligent women always marry fools

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.

An old philosopher said to Monsieur Coignard, a Reverend Father: 'You are a pig!' To which Abad Coignard answered: 'You flatter me, sir. But unfortunately, I'm only a man.'

Man is so made that he can only find relaxation from one kind of labor by taking up another.

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.

Only men who are not interested in women are interested in women's clothes. Men who like women never notice what they wear.

The greatest virtue of man is perhaps curiosity.

It is the certainty that they possess the truth that makes men cruel.

The average man does not know what to do with this life, yet wants another one which will last forever.

He flattered himself on being a man without any prejudices; and this pretension itself is a very great prejudice.

The first virtue of all really great men is that they are sincere