French Writer Quotations

Absence is to love what wind is to fire; it extinguishes the small, it enkindles the great.

He who will not reason, is a bigot; he who cannot is a fool; and he who dares not is a slave.

We need a reason to speak but none to keep silent.

Pleasure only starts once the worm has got into the fruit, to become delightful happiness must be tainted with poison.

The greatest danger of bombs is in the explosion of stupidity that they provoke.

When we hide our failings from others, we seek to hide them from ourselves, and it is in the latter attempt that we are most successful.

No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible.

The flower is a jumble of thighs, the sun's harem - the most oriental thing imaginable.

And all around is the desert; a corner of the mournful kingdom of sand.

The three great moments of my life had to be the concerts of Ellington in 1938, Dizzy in '48, and Ella in '52.

The pyramid once passed there was still a short way to go before we confronted the Sphinx, in the middle of what our contemporaries have left him of his desert.

As we had no part of our will on our entrance into this life, we should not presume to any on our leaving it, but soberly learn to will which He wills.

We believe... that the applause of silence is the only kind that counts.

I study myself more than any other subject; it is my metaphysic, and my physic.

Study what thou art Whereof thou art a part What thou knowest of this art This is really what thou art. All that is without thee also is within.

I was at that time like a fledgling swallow living high up in a niche in the eaves, who from time to time peeps out over the top of its nest with its little bright eyes.

There are certain times when public opinion is the worst of all opinions.

Prayer is more than meditation. In meditation, the source of strength is one's self. When one prays, he goes to a source of strength greater than his own.

Behind every successful man stands a surprised mother-in-law.

The very impossibility in which I find myself to prove that God is not, discovers to me his existence.

You can find women who have never had an affair, but it is hard to find a woman who has had just one.

We should often blush for our very best actions, if the world did but see all the motives upon which they were done.

We confess our little faults to persuade people that we have no large ones.

God is a comedian, playing to an audience too afraid to laugh.

We are strong enough to bear the misfortunes of others.

Men often pass from love to ambition, but they seldom come back again from ambition to love.

How is it that we remember the least triviality that happens to us, and yet not remember how often we have recounted it to the same person?

A man is sometimes as different from himself as he is from others.

The word virtue is as useful to self-interest as the vices.

We often pardon those that annoy us, but we cannot pardon those we annoy.

We need a reason for speaking, we need none for keeping silent.

Self-pity comes so naturally to all of us, that the most solid happiness can be shaken by the compassion of a fool.

Self-love is the greatest flatterer in the world.

One is not born a woman, one becomes one.

One is not born a genius, one becomes a genius.

Of all days, the day on which one has not laughed is the one most surely wasted.

If we had no faults of our own, we should not take half so much satisfaction in observing those of other people.

Growing old is no more than a bad habit which a busy man has no time to form.

Freedom, long hunted round the globe by a succession of tyrants, appeared at this period as if about to erect her standard in America.

Have you noticed with inflexible necessity of the me to insert itself between the sol which precedes it and the sol which follows it.

Our virtues are most frequently but vices in disguise.

Unlike most other children, - especially unlike those of to-day - who are eager to become men and women as speedily as possible, I had a terror of growing up, which became more and more accentuated as I grew older.

We promise in proportion to our hopes, and we deliver in proportion to our fears.

We always love those that admire us, but we do not always love those we admire.

We seldom find people ungrateful so long as we are in a condition to render them service.

Blind and unwavering indiscipline at all times constitutes the real strength of all free men.

In the summertime, we do a lot of video work. With that, I can show them if their head is moving too far or if the ball position or alignment isn't right.

I don't think there's a problem at all with steroids in the NHL. I can say that.

Judge a man by his questions rather than by his answers.

It is hard to free fools from the chains they revere.

Originality is nothing by judicious imitation. The most original writers borrowed one from another.

Everything is for the best in this best of possible worlds.

The secret of being tiresome is in telling everything.

You see many stars at night in the sky but find them not when the sun rises; can you say that there are no stars in the heaven of day? So, O man! because you behold not God in the days of your ignorance, say not that there is no God.

The best way to be boring is to leave nothing out.

In general, the art of government consists in taking as much money as possible from one party of the citizens to give to the other.

If there were no God, it would be necessary to invent him.