Anatole France Quotes - Page 4

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

Chance is the pseudonym God uses when He'd rather not sign His own name.

So long as society is founded on injustice, the function of the laws will be to defend injustice. And the more unjust they are the more respectable they will seem.

In order that knowledge be properly digested it must have been swallowed with a good appetite.

Word-carpentry is like any other kind of carpentry: you must join your sentences smoothly.

The finest words in the world are only vain sounds if you can't understand them. The best sentence? The shortest.

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.

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

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.'

A tale without love is like beef without mustard: insipid.

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

We live between two dense clouds; the forgetting of what was and the uncertainty of what will be.

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

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

If it were absolutely necessary to choose, I would rather be guilty of an immoral act than of a cruel one.

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

People who don't count won't count.

It is not customary to love what one has.

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.

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

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.

God, conquered, will become Satan; Satan, conquering, will become God. May the fates spare me this terrible lot; I love the Hell which formed my genius. I love the Earth where I have done some good, if it be possible to do any good in this fearful world where beings live but by rapine.

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

What can be more foolish than to think that all this rare fabric of heaven and earth could come by chance, when all the skill of art is not able to make an oyster!

You become a good writer just as you become a good joiner: by planing down your sentences.