Anatole France Quotes - Page 3

Caress your phrase tenderly; it will end by smiling at you.

Our passions are ourselves.

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.

Justice is the means by which established injustices are sanctioned

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

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

Without the Utopians of other times, men would still live in caves, miserable and naked. It was Utopians who traced the lines of the first City.....Out of generous dreams come beneficial realities. Utopia is the principle of all progress, and the essay into a better future.

To die for an idea is to set a rather high price upon conjecture.

Existence would be intolerable if we were never to dream.

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

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.

The books that everybody admires are those that nobody reads.

It is only the poor who are forbidden to beg.

Dictionary: The universe in alphabetical order.

Of all the sexual aberrations, chastity is the strangest.

Silence is the wit of fools.

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

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

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

True education is the ability to discern the difference between what you do know and what you don't.

We thank God for having created this world, and praise Him for having made another, quite different one, where the wrongs of this one are corrected.

Without lies humanity would perish of despair and boredom.

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.

Lovers who love truly do not write down their happiness.

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.