Anatole France Quotes
Quotations and aphorisms by Anatole France:
An education which does not cultivate the will is an education that depraves the mind.
~Anatole France
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I thank fate for having made me born poor. Poverty taught me the true value of the gifts useful to life.
~Anatole France
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What frightens us most in a madman is his sane conversation.
~Anatole France
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Nature has no principles. She makes no distinction between good and evil.
~Anatole France
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Of all the ways of defining man, the worst is the one which makes him out to be a rational animal.
~Anatole France
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The truth is that life is delicious, horrible, charming, frightful, sweet, bitter, and that is everything.
~Anatole France
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If a million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing.
~Anatole France
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We do not know what to do with this short life, yet we want another which will be eternal.
~Anatole France
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To imagine is everything, to know is nothing at all.
~Anatole France
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It is by acts and not by ideas that people live.
~Anatole France
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Ignorance and error are necessary to life, like bread and water.
~Anatole France
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I prefer the folly of enthusiasm to the indifference of wisdom.
~Anatole France
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History books that contain no lies are extremely dull.
~Anatole France
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The average man does not know what to do with this life, yet wants another one which will last forever.
~Anatole France
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Irony is the gaiety of reflection and the joy of wisdom.
~Anatole France
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The good critic is he who relates the adventures of his soul among masterpieces.
~Anatole France
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One thing above all gives charm to men's thoughts, and this is unrest. A mind that is not uneasy irritates and bores me.
~Anatole France
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Until one has loved an animal a part of one's soul remains unawakened.
~Anatole France
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Lovers who love truly do not write down their happiness.
~Anatole France
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In art as in love, instinct is enough.
~Anatole France
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There are very honest people who do not think that they have had a bargain unless they have cheated a merchant.
~Anatole France
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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!
~Anatole France
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If the path be beautiful, let us not ask where it leads.
~Anatole France
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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.
~Anatole France
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We reproach people for talking about themselves; but it is the subject they treat best.
~Anatole France
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That man is prudent who neither hopes nor fears anything from the uncertain events of the future.
~Anatole France
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Only men who are not interested in women are interested in women's clothes. Men who like women never notice what they wear.
~Anatole France
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You learn to speak by speaking, to study by studying, to run by running, to work by working; in just the same way, you learn to love by loving.
~Anatole France
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The greatest virtue of man is perhaps curiosity.
~Anatole France
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Of all the sexual aberrations, chastity is the strangest.
~Anatole France
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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.
~Anatole France
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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.
~Anatole France
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Silence is the wit of fools.
~Anatole France
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A person is never happy except at the price of some ignorance.
~Anatole France
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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.
~Anatole France
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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.
~Anatole France
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Religion has done love a great service by making it a sin.
~Anatole France
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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.
~Anatole France
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It is human nature to think wisely and act in an absurd fashion.
~Anatole France
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It is only the poor who pay cash, and that not from virtue, but because they are refused credit.
~Anatole France
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When a thing has been said and well, have no scruple. Take it and copy it.
~Anatole France
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Nine tenths of education is encouragement.
~Anatole France
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It is well for the heart to be naive and the mind not to be.
~Anatole France
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The books that everybody admires are those that nobody reads.
~Anatole France
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It is better to understand little than to misunderstand a lot.
~Anatole France
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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.
~Anatole France
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Without lies humanity would perish of despair and boredom.
~Anatole France
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Wandering re-establishes the original harmony which once existed between man and the universe.
~Anatole France
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To accomplish great things, we must not only act, but also dream; not only plan, but also believe.
~Anatole France
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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.
~Anatole France
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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.
~Anatole France
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The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself a fool.
~Anatole France
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Innocence most often is a good fortune and not a virtue.
~Anatole France
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Existence would be intolerable if we were never to dream.
~Anatole France
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The whole art of teaching is only the art of awakening the natural curiosity of young minds for the purpose of satisfying it afterwards.
~Anatole France
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Chance is perhaps the pseudonym of God when he did not want to sign.
~Anatole France
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