Francois Quotes

#1. Civility is a desire to receive civilities, and to be accounted well-bred.

Francois De La Rochefoucauld

#2. O laugh is proper to the man.

Francois Rabelais

#3. We know well only what we are deprived of.

Francois Mauriac

#4. I would have no desire other than to accomplish thy will. Teach me to pray; pray thyself in me.

Francois Fenelon

#5. The sicknesses of the soul have their ups and downs like those of the body; what we take to be a cure is most often merely a respite or change of disease.

Francois De La Rochefoucauld

#6. Nothing ought more to humiliate men who have merited great praise than the care they still take to boast of little things.

Francois De La Rochefoucauld

#7. Muslims in France should be able to practice their religion freely and safely.

Francois Hollande

#8. The old begin to complain of the conduct of the young when they themselves are no longer able to set a bad example.

Francois De La Rochefoucauld

#9. That is the mystery of grace: it never comes too late.

Francois Mauriac

#10. Novelty is to love like bloom to fruit; it gives a luster which is easily effaced, but never returns.

Francois De La Rochefoucauld

#11. To resolve the climate crisis, good will, statements of intent are not enough. We are at breaking point.

Francois Hollande

#12. If we judge love by most of its effects, it resembles rather hatred than affection.

Francois De La Rochefoucauld

#13. There are no accidents so unlucky but the prudent may draw some advantage from them.

Francois De La Rochefoucauld

#14. It is my feeling that Time ripens all things; with Time all things are revealed; Time is the father of truth.

Francois Rabelais

#15. Nothing is so catching as example.

Francois De La Rochefoucauld

#16. One can decide that the principal role of knowledge is as an indispensable element in the functioning of society, and act in accordance with that decision, only if one has already decided that society is a giant machine.

Jean-Francois Lyotard

#17. A man does not please long when he has only species of wit.

Francois De La Rochefoucauld

#18. In an election, one needs both hope and audacity.

Francois Hollande

#19. A man's passion for the mountain is, above all, his childhood which refuses to die.

Francois Mauriac

#20. If there is not a united policy, this mechanism will not work: it will collapse, and it will ... undoubtedly be the end of Schengen, the return of national borders.

Francois Hollande

#21. I write whenever it suits me. During a creative period I write every day; a novel should not be interrupted.

Francois Mauriac

#22. Tastes in young people are changed by natural impetuosity, and in the aged are preserved by habit.

Francois De La Rochefoucauld

#23. Listen less to your own thoughts and more to God's thoughts.

Francois Fenelon

#24. Let every one be fully convinced in his own mind.

Francois Rabelais

#25. We sometimes imagine we hate flattery, but we only hate the way we are flattered.

Francois De La Rochefoucauld

#26. To totalitarianism, an opponent is by definition subversive; democracy treats subversives as mere opponents for fear of betraying its principles.

Jean Francois Revel

#27. And today more than ever, knowing about that society involves first of all choosing what approach the inquiry will take, and that necessarily means choosing how society can answer.

Jean-Francois Lyotard

#28. I love the way she projects two facets: a visible persona and a subterranean one. She keeps her thoughts to herself; she seems to suggest that her secret, inner life is at least as significant as the appearance she gives.

Francois Truffaut

#29. The sea stood up before him, foaming, torn by lightning bolts, opening terrifying mouths that gobbled up the dense, hard black rains unleashed by the sky like hate.

Jean-Francois Beauchemin

#30. The wit of men compared to that of women is like rouge compared to the rose.

Germain-Francois Poullain De Saint-Foix

#31. Love of glory, fear of shame, greed for fortune, the desire to make life agreeable and comfortable, and the wish to depreciate others - all of these are often the causes of the bravery that is spoken so highly of by men.

Francois De La Rochefoucauld

#32. Innocence does not find near so much protection as guilt.

Francois De La Rochefoucauld

#33. Everyone must understand that you can't demand solidarity when there's a problem and shirk your duties when there are solutions.

Francois Hollande

#34. Many live in the ivory tower called reality; they never venture on the open sea of thought.

Francois Gautier

#35. We have chased away the clouds, the sky is all 'rose.'

Francois Hollande

#36. The truest way to be deceived is to think oneself more knowing than others.

Francois De La Rochefoucauld

#37. Those whom the world has delighted to honor have oftener been influenced in their doings by ambition and vanity than by patriotism.

Francois De La Rochefoucauld

#38. Some weak people are so sensible of their weakness as to be able to make a good use of it.

Francois De La Rochefoucauld

#39. We torment ourselves rather to make it appear that we are happy than to become so.

Francois De La Rochefoucauld

#40. ["Ambition has been so strong as to make very miserable men take comfort that they were supreme in misery;

Francois De La Rochefoucauld

#41. I know everything except myself.

Francois Villon

#42. In a major matter no details are small.

Jean Francois Paul De Gondi

#43. Let us endeavor to commence every enterprise with a pure view to the glory of God, continue it without distraction, and finish it without impatience.

Francois Fenelon

#44. Where princes are concerned, a man who is able to do good is as dangerous and almost as criminal as a man who intends to do evil.

Jean Francois Paul De Gondi

#45. My mission is to put France back on its feet. The priority is employment. Efforts have to be made, but those efforts must be made fairly.

Francois Hollande

#46. There is no disguise which can hide love for long where it exists, or simulate it where it does not.

Francois De La Rochefoucauld

#47. We were two and had but one heart.

Francois Villon

#48. However we may conceal our passions under the veil ... there is always some place where they peep out.

Francois De La Rochefoucauld

#49. Great men help dazzle the people; after that, they dazzle themselves even more dangerously.

Jean Francois Paul De Gondi

#50. The appetite grows with eating.

Francois Rabelais

#51. God would behold in you a simplicity which will contain so much the more of His wisdom as it contains less of your own.

Francois Fenelon

#52. What is perfectly true is perfectly witty.

Francois De La Rochefoucauld

#53. The first lover is kept a long while, when no offer is made of a second.

Francois De La Rochefoucauld

#54. Time spent in prayer is never wasted.

Francois Fenelon

#55. Three films a day, three books a week and records of great music would be enough to make me happy to the day I die.

Francois Truffaut

#56. There is nothing beautiful or sweet or great in life that is not mysterious.

Francois-Rene De Chateaubriand

#57. If the head is lost, all that perishes is the individual; if the balls are lost, all of human nature perishes.

Francois Rabelais

#58. Peace is a place of unhindered enjoyment of friendship beyond guilt, suspicion, blame of inferiority

Francois Du Toit

#59. In all aspects of life, we take on a part and an appearance to seem to be what we wish to be
and thus the world is merely composed of actors.

Francois De La Rochefoucauld

#60. Mandela's message will never die. It will continue to inspire freedom fighters and give confidence to people who defend just causes and universal rights.

Francois Hollande

#61. We only acknowledge small faults in order to make it appear that we are free from great ones.

Francois De La Rochefoucauld

#62. We often bore others when we think we cannot possibly bore them.

Francois De La Rochefoucauld

#63. Those who are overreached by our cunning are far from appearing to us as ridiculous as we appear to ourselves when the cunning of others has overreached us.

Francois De La Rochefoucauld

#64. Nobody deserves to be praised for goodness unless he is strong enough to be bad.

Francois De La Rochefoucauld

#65. He had realised that it was Clara he loved, and that he loved her in many different ways. (Because there are even more ways of loving than there are ways of being happy, but it would take another book to explain them all.)

Francois Lelord

#66. It often happens that things come into the mind in a more finished form than could have been achieved after much study.

Francois De La Rochefoucauld

#67. Folly pursues us at all periods of our lives. If someone seems wise it is only because his follies are proportionate to his age and fortune.

Francois De La Rochefoucauld

#68. One should never pursue the hazards of fortune to their very ends andit behooves all adventurers to treat their good luck with reverence, neither bothering nor upsetting it.

Francois Rabelais

#69. Knowing and feeling are two different things, and feeling is what counts.

Francois Lelord

#70. Old fools are greater fools than young ones.

Francois De La Rochefoucauld

#71. Love, all agreeable as it is, charms more by the fashion in which it displays itself, than by its own true merit.

Francois De La Rochefoucauld

#72. The world is full of pots jeering at kettles.

Francois De La Rochefoucauld

#73. We must avoid fastidiousness; neatness, when it is moderate, is a virtue; but when it is carried to an extreme, it narrows the mind.

Francois Fenelon

#74. We do not lack strength so much as the will to use it; and very often our imagining that things are impossible is nothing but an excuse of our own contriving, to reconcile ourselves to our own idleness.

Francois De La Rochefoucauld

#75. When I was a young man, King Francois of France greatly admired my bare buttocks. I have that information only by hearsay, of course, because my buttocks were in the king's chateau of Chambord while I was here in Italy.

Alan Fisk

#76. 7:23 You are not for sale (to the law of works). The ransom God paid for your freedom now binds you to the lordship of his love. The sign over your life says, SOLD!

Francois Du Toit

#77. Film lovers are sick people.

Francois Truffaut

#78. A man convinced of his own merit will accept misfortune as an honor, for thus can he persuade others, as well as himself, that he is a worthy target for the arrows of fate.

Francois De La Rochefoucauld

#79. As long as anything in this world means anything to you, your freedom is only a word. You are like a bird that is held by a leash; you can only fly so far.

Francois Fenelon

#80. He didn't necessarily think that it was okay, but when a psychiatrist says 'okay', it just means 'I understand what you're saying.

Francois Lelord

#81. We frequently are troublesome to others, when we think it impossible for us ever to be so.

Francois De La Rochefoucauld

#82. Gratitude is merely the secret hope of further favors.

Francois De La Rochefoucauld

#83. It is with certain good qualities as with the senses; those who have them not can neither appreciate nor comprehend them in others.

Francois De La Rochefoucauld

#84. It is easier to appear worthy of a position one does not hold, than of the office which one fills.

Francois De La Rochefoucauld

#85. We often boast that we are never bored; but yet we are so conceited that we do not perceive how often we bore others.

Francois De La Rochefoucauld

#86. We always like those who admire us.

Francois De La Rochefoucauld

#87. True bravery means doing alone that which one could do if all the world were by.

Francois De La Rochefoucauld

#88. There are few virtuous women who are not bored with their trade.

Francois De La Rochefoucauld

#89. What we cut off from our other faults is very often but so much added to our pride.

Francois De La Rochefoucauld

#90. O Lord, I do most cheerfully commit all unto Thee.

Francois Fenelon

#91. The youth who, like a woman, loves to adorn his person, has renounced all claim to wisdom and to glory; glory is due to those only who dare to associate with pain, and have trampled pleasure under their feet.

Francois Fenelon

#92. Hope and fear are inseparable.

Francois De La Rochefoucauld

#93. It is a kind of happiness to know just how unhappy we could be.

Francois De La Rochefoucauld

#94. As an actor, as much as I'm interested in how you make movies and TV shows, even as a kid, I've always hated making of featurettes and special features on DVDs. I think it breaks the spell.

Francois Arnaud

#95. Quarrels would not last long if the fault was only on one side.

Francois De La Rochefoucauld

#96. We do not wish ardently for what we desire only through reason.

Francois De La Rochefoucauld

#97. The passions often engender their contraries.

Francois De La Rochefoucauld

#98. I don't want to leave my successor and my children to pay for France's debt.

Francois Hollande

#99. I love Germany so much I'm glad there are two of them.

Francois Mauriac

#100. For me Greece is Maria Farantouri. This is how I imagined Goddess Hera to be: strong, pure and vigilant. I have never encountered any other artist able to give me such a strong sense of the divine.

Francois Mitterrand