Top 100 Anatole France Quotes
#1. A man thinks he is dying for his country," said Anatole France, "but he is dying for a few industrialists." But even that is saying too much. What one dies for is not even so substantial and tangible as an industrialist.
Simone Weil
#2. Remember what Anatole France said about the dog masturbating on your leg
'Sure, it's honest, but who needs it?
Richard Yates
#3. For knowledge to be digested, it must be absorbed with relish," wrote Anatole France.
Anonymous
#4. The dog is a religious animal. In his savage state he worships the moon and the lights that float upon the waters. These are his gods to whom he appeals at night with long-drawn howls.
Anatole France
#6. To die for an idea is to set a rather high price upon conjecture.
Anatole France
#7. It is human nature to think wisely and act in an absurd fashion.
Anatole France
#8. The man of science multiples the points of contact between man and nature.
Anatole France
#9. Time deals gently only with those who take it gently.
Anatole France
#10. It is good to collect things, but it is better to go on walks.
Anatole France
#12. The majestic equality of the law forbids rich and poor alike from pissing in the streets, sleeping under bridges, and stealing bread.
Anatole France
#14. Lack of understanding is a great power. Sometimes it enables men to conquer the world.
Anatole France
#16. History books that contain no lies are extremely dull.
Anatole France
#17. We have never heard the devil's side of the story, God wrote all the book.
Anatole France
#18. That man is prudent who neither hopes nor fears anything from the uncertain events of the future.
Anatole France
#19. It is remarkable how great an influence our clothes have on our moral state.
Anatole France
#20. In every well-governed state wealth is a sacred thing; in democracies it is the only sacred thing.
Anatole France
#21. What we call strategy is mainly just crossing rivers on bridges and passing mountains though cols.
Anatole France
#22. Jealousy is a virtue of democracies which preserves them from tyrants.
Anatole France
#24. Determination. To accomplish great things, we must not only act, but also dream. Not only plan, but also believe.
Anatole France
#25. Human affairs inspire in noble hearts only two feelings-admiration or pity.
Anatole France
#26. There is a certain impertinence in allowing oneself to be burned for an opinion.
Anatole France
#27. When it does not yield to the rudder," said he to them, "the ship yields to the rock.
Anatole France
#28. To know is nothing at all; to imagine is everything.
Anatole France
#29. He prided himself on being a man without prejudice, and this itself is a very great prejudice.
Anatole France
#31. I never go into the country for a change of air and a holiday. I always go instead into the eighteenth century.
Anatole France
#32. 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
#33. Ignorance and error are necessary to life, like bread and water.
Anatole France
#35. If we don't change, we don't grow. If we don't grow, we aren't really living.
Anatole France
#36. When a thing has been said and said well, have no scruple. Take it and copy it.
Anatole France
#38. The wonder is, not that the field of stars is so vast, but that man has measured it.
Anatole France
#39. That child whose mother has never smiled upon him is worthy neither of the table of the gods nor the couch of the goddesses.
Anatole France
#40. What frightens us most in a madman is his sane conversation.
Anatole France
#41. A writer is rarely so well inspired as when he talks about himself.
Anatole France
#43. We thank God for having created this world, and praise Him for having made another, quite different one, where the wrongs of this one are corrected.
Anatole France
#44. The Arab who built himself a hut with marbles from the temple of Palmyra is more philosophical than all the curators of the museums of London, Paris, and Munich.
Anatole France
#45. Man is so made that he can only find relaxation from one kind of labor by taking up another.
Anatole France
#46. We do not know what to do with this short life, yet we yearn for another that will be eternal.
Anatole France
#47. If fifty million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing.
Anatole France
#48. Wandering re-establishes the original harmony which once existed between man and the universe.
Anatole France
#50. A dictionary is merely the universe arranged in alphabetical order.
Anatole France
#51. And what, above all, I blame in you is that you have not married in compliance with the law and given children to the Republic, as every good citizen is bound to do.
Anatole France
#52. The power of love itself weakens and gradually becomes lost with age, like all the other energies of man.
Anatole France
#53. There are no bad books any more than there are ugly women.
Anatole France
#54. 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.
Anatole France
#57. It is the certainty that they possess the truth that makes men cruel.
Anatole France
#58. as regards ownership the right of the first occupier is uncertain and badly founded. The right of conquest, on the other hand, rests on more solid foundations. It is the only right that receives respect since it is the only one that makes itself respected.
Anatole France
#59. Those who have given themselves the most concern about the happiness of peoples have made their neighbors very miserable.
Anatole France
#60. The good critic is he who relates the adventures of his soul among masterpieces.
Anatole France
#61. Existence would be intolerable if we were never to dream.
Anatole France
#62. Innocence most often is a good fortune and not a virtue.
Anatole France
#63. If you have not loved an animal, your soul remains unawakened.
Anatole France
#64. Suffering - how divine it is, how misunderstood! 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
#65. If it were absolutely necessary to choose, I would rather be guilty of an immoral act than of a cruel one.
Anatole France
#66. It is not easy to be a pretty woman without causing mischief.
Anatole France
#67. Religion has done love a great service by making it a sin.
Anatole France
#68. A woman without breasts is like a bed without pillows.
Anatole France
#69. 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.
Anatole France
#70. It is well for the heart to be naive and the mind not to be.
Anatole France
#71. I ought not to fear to survive my own people so long as there are men in the world; for there are always some whom one can love.
Anatole France
#72. I thank fate for having made me born poor. Poverty taught me the true value of the gifts useful to life.
Anatole France
#73. What can be more foolish than to think that all this rare fabric of heaven and earth could come by chance?
Anatole France
#74. The Kingdom of Heaven is a military autocracy and there is no public opinion in it.
Anatole France
#75. God forbids suicide, and is unwilling that his creatures should destroy themselves.
Anatole France
#76. I see only one solution," said St. Augustine. "The penguins will go to hell." "But they have no soul," observed St. Irenaeus. "It is a pity"" sighed Tertullian.
Anatole France
#77. A tale without love is like beef without mustard: insipid.
Anatole France
#78. Ah! Yes, the truth, that ingenious concoction of desirability of appearance.
Anatole France
#79. Insane Europeans who plot to cut each others' throats, now that one and the same civilisation enfolds and unites them all!
Anatole France
#80. Each one dreams the dream of life in his own way. I have dreamed it in my library; and when the hour shall come in which I must leave this world, may it please God to take me from my ladder - from before my shelves of books! ...
Anatole France
#81. In truth man is made rather to eat ices than to pore over old texts.
Anatole France
#82. Nature has no principles. She makes no distinction between good and evil.
Anatole France
#83. In order that knowledge be properly digested it must have been swallowed with a good appetite.
Anatole France
#84. The truth is that life is delicious, horrible, charming, frightful, sweet, bitter, and that is everything.
Anatole France
#85. An education which does not cultivate the will is an education that depraves the mind.
Anatole France
#87. It is good to collect things, it is better to take walks.
Anatole France
#89. Chance is the pseudonym God uses when He'd rather not sign His own name.
Anatole France
#91. For every monarchy overthrown the sky becomes less brilliant, because it loses a star. A republic is ugliness set free.
Anatole France
#93. Universal peace will be realized, not because man will become better, but because a new order of things, a new science, new economic necessities, will impose peace.
Anatole France
#94. The duty of literature is to note what counts, and to light up what is suited to the light. If it ceases to choose and to love, it becomes like a woman who gives herself without preference.
Anatole France
#95. A simple style is like white light. Although complex, it does not appear to be so.
Anatole France
#96. The history books which contain no lies are extremely tedious
Anatole France
#97. Take care, father," said Bulloch gently, "that what you call murder and robbery may not really be war and conquest, those sacred foundations of empires, those sources of all human virtues and all human greatness.
Anatole France
#98. All the good writers of confessions, from Augustine onwards, are men who are still a little in love with their sins.
Anatole France
#100. But my foreknowledge must not encroach upon their free will. "In order not to impair human liberty, I will be ignorant of what I know, I will thicken upon my eyes the veils I have pierced, and in my blind clearsightedness I will let myself be surprised by what I have foreseen.
Anatole France
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