Jean Giono Quotes

#1. Civilization tries to persuade us we are going towards something, a distant goal. We have forgotten that our only goal is to live, to live each and every day, and that if we live each and every day, our true goal is achieved.

Jean Giono

#2. I have always hated crowds. I like deserts, prisons, and monasteries. I have discovered, too, that there are fewer idiots at 3000 meters above sea level than down below.

Jean Giono

#3. I should like to write about what happens when fictive people encounter and are embellished by real people.

Jean Giono

#4. And he told stories about the stars above, about the earth below. He told them to make the night pass, and also because his heart was all reflections in which the soul of the world moved.

Jean Giono

#5. Remember, all of man's happiness is in the little valleys. Tiny little ones. Small enough to call from one side to the other.

Jean Giono

#6. There are also times in life when a person has to rush off in pursuit of hopefulness.

Jean Giono

#7. Spring sprang suddenly onto the land.

Jean Giono

#8. Days begin and end in the dead of night. They are not shaped long, in the manner of things which lead to ends - arrow, road, man's life on earth. They are shaped round, in the manner of things eternal and stable - sun, world, God.

Jean Giono

#9. The Italians are said to be noisy and to gesticulate, but that is a libel dreamed up by the English.

Jean Giono

#10. Boredom is the most horrible of wolves.

Jean Giono

#11. From the time we began to build houses and cities, since we invented the wheel, we have not advanced one step toward happiness. We have always been in halves. As long as we invent and progress in mechanical things and not in love, we shall not achieve happiness.

Jean Giono