Anatole France Quotes

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

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

In its majestic equality, the law forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets and steal loaves of bread.

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

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

Stupidity is far more dangerous than evil, for evil takes a break from time to time, stupidity does not.

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

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.

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

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

Do not try to satisfy your vanity by teaching a great many things. Awaken people's curiosity. It is enough to open minds; do not overload them. Put there just a spark. If there is some good inflammable stuff, it will catch fire.

A woman without breasts is like a bed without pillows.

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.

A people living under the perpetual menace of war and invasion is very easy to govern. It demands no social reform. It does not haggle over expenditures for armaments and military equipment. It pays without discussion, it ruins itself, and that is an excellent thing for the syndicates of financiers and manufacturers for whom patriotic terrors are an abundant source of gain.

In art as in love, instinct is enough.

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

I cling to my imperfection, as the very essence of my being.

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

Man is a rational animal. He can think up a reason for anything he wants to believe.

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

Never lend books, for no one ever returns them

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.

Justice is the means by which established injustices are sanctioned

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.

Awaken people's curiosity. It is enough to open minds, do not overload them. Put there just a spark.

Sometimes one day in a difference place gives you more than ten years of a life at home.

Nine tenths of education is encouragement.

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

Armenia is dying, but it will survive. The little blood that it still has left is precious blood that will give birth to a heroic generation. A nation that does not want to die, does not die.

Silence is the wit of fools.

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!

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

It is the certainty that they possess the truth that makes men cruel.

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

Nature, in her indifference, makes no distinction between good and evil.

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

Intelligent women always marry fools

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

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 imagine is everything, to know is nothing at all.

The more you say, the less they remember.

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

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

Of all earthly creatures, humans alone have the power to choose. One must never lose time in vainly regretting the past nor in complaining about the changes which cause us discomfort, for change is the very essence of life.

Without lies humanity would perish of despair and boredom.

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

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

We have never heard the devil's side of the story, God wrote all the book.

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

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.