French author quotes Quotes

“What, then, is that incalculable feeling that deprives the mind of the sleep necessary to life? A world that can be explained even with bad reasons is a familiar world. But, on the other hand, in a universe suddenly divested of illusions and lights, man feels an alien, a stranger. His exile is without remedy since he is deprived of the memory of a lost home or the hope of a promised land. This divorce between man and his life, the actor and his setting, is properly the feeling of absurdity.”

“The more he became truly wise, the more he distrusted everything he knew.”

“If one could only say just once: 'this is clear', all would be saved”

“If you wish to understand what Revolution is, call it Progress; and if you wish to understand what Progress is, call it Tomorrow.”

“She was a lovely blonde, with fine teeth. She had gold and pearls for her dowry; but her gold was on her head, and her pearls were in her mouth.”

“Human society, the world, and the whole of mankind is to be found in the alphabet.”

“Jealousy is not love, but self-love.”

“There was the same dazzling red glare. The sea gasped for air with each shallow, stifled wave that broke on the sand. ...with every blade of light that flashed off the sand, from a bleached shell or a peice of broken glass, my jaws tightened. I walked for a long time.”

“It is vain for the coward to flee; death follows close behind; it is only by defying it that the brave escape.”

“Vain is the hope of finding pleasure in that which one has hitherto disdained; as when the warrior hopes to find pleasure in the joys of the sedentaries.”

“Tis more dishonourable to distrust a friend than to be deceived by him.”

“England would be better off without Canada; it keeps her in a prepared state for war at a great expense and constant irritation.”

“To the man who is truly ethical all life is sacred, including that which from the human point of view seems lower in the scale. He makes distinctions only as each case comes before him, and under the pressure of necessity, as, for example, when it falls to him to decide which of two lives he must sacrifice in order to preserve the other. But all through this series of decisions he is conscious of acting on subjective grounds and arbitrarily, and knows that he bears the responsibility for the life which is sacrificed.”

“The world is never quiet, even its silence eternally resounds with the same notes, in vibrations which escape our ears. As for those that we perceive, they carry sounds to us, occasionally a chord, never a melody.”

“Si quelqu'un veut un mouton, c'est la preuve qu'il en existe un. (If somebody wants a sheep, that is a proof that one exists.)”

“You are very harsh.' 'I have seen the world.”

“The art of government is not to let me grow stale.”

“The earth, in its natural, uncultivated state was, and ever would have continued to be, the common property of the human race." As the land gets cultivated, "it is the value of the improvement, only, and not the earth itself, that is in individual property. Every proprietor, therefore, of cultivated lands, owes to the community a ground-rent..to every person, rich or poor...because it is in lieu of the natural inheritance, which, as a right, belongs to every man, over and above the property he may have created, or inherited from those who did”

“There are some who speak well and write badly. For the place and the audience warm them, and draw from their minds more than they think of without that warmth.”

“I sometimes need to write things which I cannot completely control but which therefore prove that what is in me is stronger than I am.”

“In our time no one has the conception of what is great. It is up to me to show them.”

“Death and the sun are not to be looked at steadily.”

“Many men are deeply moved by the mere semblance of suffering in a woman; they take the look of pain for a sign of constancy or of love.”

“If those who are the enemies of innocent amusements had the direction of the world, they would take away the spring, and youth, the former from the year, the latter from human life.”

“Weeds are omnipresent; errors are to be found in the heart of the most lovable.”

“We run carelessly to the precipice, after we have put something before us to prevent us seeing it.”

“The passions are the winds which fill the sails of the vessel; they sink it at times, but without them it would be impossible to make way.”

“A man is not dependent upon his fellow creature, when he does not fear death.”

“The only real progress lies in learning to be wrong all alone.”

“To take away (voting) is to reduce a man to slavery.”

“Those only are despicable who fear to be despised.”

“History is the study of the world's crime”

“The only way out of today's misery is for people to become worthy of each other's trust.”

“Some beautiful things are more dazzling when they are still imperfect than when they have been too perfectly crafted.”

“We rarely think people have good sense unless they agree with us.”

“La ve rite , comme la lumie' re, aveugle. Le mensonge, au contraire, est un beau cre puscule qui met chaque objet en valeur. Truth, like light, blinds. A lie, on the contrary, is a beautiful twilight which shows the value of each object.”

“The rich's paradise was created by the poor's hell.”

“For true poetry, complete poetry, consists in the harmony of contraries. Hence, it is time to say aloud--and it is here above allthat exceptions prove the rule--that everything that exists in nature exists in art.”

“A poet who is a bad man is a degraded being, baser and more culpable than a bad man who is not a poet.”

“Antiquity is full of the praises of another antiquity still more remote.”

“The real man smiles in trouble, gathers strength from distress, and grows brave by reflection.”

“To ridicule philosophy is truly philosophical.[Fr., Se moquer de la philosophie c'est vraiment philosophe.]”

“Do you know what is more hard to bear than the reverses of fortune? It is the baseness, the hideous ingratitude, of man.”

“At 30 a man should know himself like the palm of his hand, know the exact number of his defects and qualities, know how far he can go, foretell his failures - be what he is. And, above all, accept these things.”

“Generally speaking, we would make a good bargain by renouncing all the good that people say of us, upon condition they would say no ill.”

“A man who has no consideration for the needs of his men ought never to be given command.”

“The cause of America is in great measure the cause of all mankind.”

“Great men are never cruel without necessity.”

“It is not a field of a few acres of ground, but a cause, that we are defending, and whether we defeat the enemy in one battle, or by degrees, the consequences will be the same.”

“It is safer to do most men harm than to do them too much good.”