Anatole France Quotations

To accomplish great things, we must not only act, but also dream; not only plan, but also believe.

Until one has loved an animal a part of one's soul remains unawakened.

It is by acts and not by ideas that people live.

In art as in love, instinct is enough.

If the path be beautiful, let us not ask where it leads.

The whole art of teaching is only the art of awakening the natural curiosity of young minds for the purpose of satisfying it afterwards.

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

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 know and what you don't.

To imagine is everything, to know is nothing at all.

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

Lovers who love truly do not write down their happiness.

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

It is better to understand little than to misunderstand a lot.

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

Wandering re-establishes the original harmony which once existed between man and the universe.

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

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

Irony is the gaiety of reflection and the joy of wisdom.

The poor have to labour in the face of the majestic equality of the law, which forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.

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

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

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.

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

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.

If a million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing.

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

The good critic is he who relates the adventures of his soul among masterpieces.

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

Religion has done love a great service by making it a sin.

History books that contain no lies are extremely dull.

It is human nature to think wisely and act in an absurd fashion.

Of all the sexual aberrations, chastity is the strangest.

The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.

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

The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself a fool.

Without lies humanity would perish of despair and boredom.

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

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

Existence would be intolerable if we were never to dream

The greatest virtue of man is perhaps curiosity.

We do not know what to do with this short life, yet we want another which will be eternal.

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

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

Suffering! 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.

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

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

We reproach people for talking about themselves; but it is the subject they treat best.

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.

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.

Never lend books, for no one ever returns them; the only books I have in my library are books that other folks have left me.

The books that everybody admires are those that nobody reads.

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

The pseudonym for God when He did not want to sign.

Make love now, by night and by day, in winter and in summer... You are in the world for that and the rest of life is nothing but vanity, illusion, waste. There is only one science, love, only one riches, love, only one policy, love. To make love is all the law, and the prophets.

It is almost systematically to constitute a natural moral law. Nature has no principles. She furnishes us with no reason to believe that human life is to be respected. Nature, in her indifference, makes no difference between right and wrong.

It is human nature to think wisely and act foolishly

Religion has done love a great servive by making it a sin.

The absurdity of a religious practice may be clearly demonstrated without lessening the numbers of people who indulge in it

When a thing has been said and well said, have no scruple; take it and copy it

The dog is a religious animal. In his savage state he worships the moon and the lights that float upon the waters. These are his gods to whom he appeals at night with long-drawn howls.

A writer is rarely so well inspired as when he talks about himself.

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.

There is a certain impertinence in allowing oneself to be burned for an opinion.

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

It is almost impossible systematically to constitute a natural moral law. Nature has no principles. She furnishes us with no reason to believe that human life is to be respected. Nature, in her indifference, makes no distinction between good and evil.

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

The heart errs like the head; its errors are not any the less fatal, and we have more trouble getting free of them because of their sweetness.

God forbids suicide, and is unwilling that his creatures should destroy themselves.

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

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.

The mania of thinking renders one unfit for every activity.

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.

Christianity has done a great deal for love by making a sin of it.

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.

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

Never lend books, for no one ever returns them

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

Distrust even Mathematics; albeit so sublime and highly perfected, we have here a machine of such delicacy it can only work in vacuo, and one grain of sand in the wheels is enough to put everything out of gear. One shudders to think to what disaster such a grain of sand may bring a Mathematical brain. Remember Pascal.

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

Human affairs inspire in noble hearts only two feelings-admiration or pity.

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

We chase dreams and embrace shadows.

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.

It is only the poor who are forbidden to beg.

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

Our passions are ourselves.

The future is hidden even from those who make it.

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

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

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

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.

The Kingdom of Heaven is a military autocracy and there is no public opinion in it.

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

America, where thanks to Congress, there are forty million laws to enforce the Ten Commandments.

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

The more you say, the less they remember.

Nothing spoils a confession like repentance.

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

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.