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Quotes by French Authors
"People who do not speak our language very well do complain of feeling rebuffed by French people, who can sometimes be impatient, or even intolerant."
"Men are never convinced of your reasons, of your sincerity, of the seriousness of your sufferings, except by your death. So long as you are alive, your case is doubtful; you have a right only to their skepticism."
"The solitary and thoughtful stroller finds a singular intoxication in this universal communion. The man who loves to lose himself in a crowd enjoys feverish delights that the egoist locked up in himself as in a box, and the slothful man like a mollusk in his shell, will be eternally deprived of. He adopts as his own all the occupations, all the joys and all the sorrows that chance offers."
"Sadness does not inhere in things; it does not reach us from the world and through mere contemplation of the world. It is a product of our own thought. We create it out of whole cloth."
"I love good and pleasure, I hate evil and pain, I want to be happy and I am not mistaken in believing, that people, angels and even demons have those same inclinations."
"The welfare of the people in particular has always been the alibi of tyrants, and it provides the further advantage of giving the servants of tyranny a good conscience."
"Among peoples who are geographically grouped together like the peoples of Europe there must exist a sort of federal link. It is this link which I wish to endeavour to establish."
"It is said that nothing in our lives is ever lost, that nothing can prevent its having been. That is why, so very often the weight of the past lies ineluctably upon the present. But that is why it is so real in memory, so wholly itself, so far beyond replacement."
"You must realize that men make war as much with the enthusiasm of those who want it as with the despair of those who reject it with all their soul."
"At any street corner the feeling of absurdity can strike any man in the face."
"He walked on in silence, the solitary sound of his footsteps echoing in his head, as in a deserted street, at dawn. His solitude was so complete, beneath a lovely sky as mellow and serene as a good conscience, amid that busy throng, that he was amazed at his own existence; he must be somebody else's nightmare, and whoever it was would certainly awaken soon."
"A library implies an act of faith which generations, still in darkness hid, sign in their night in witness of the dawn."
"An old thing becomes new if you detach it from what usually surrounds it."
"Emotion is first of all and in principle an accident."
"To an atheist all writings tend to atheism: he corrupts the most innocent matter with his own venom."
"I say a murder is abstract. You pull the trigger and after that you do not understand anything that happens."
"Men are not allowed to think freely about chemistry and biology: why should they be allowed to think freely about political philosophy?"
"Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal."
"Nothing is as tedious as the limping days,When snowdrifts yearly cover all the ways,And ennui, sour fruit of incurious gloom,Assumes control of fate's immortal loom."
"Better to have beasts that let themselves be killed than men who run away."
"A lot of people are upset that I'm not working. They say it's a disgrace."
"It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important."
"Life has but one true charm: the charm of the game. But what if we're indifferent to whether we win or lose?"
"A book is a garden, an orchard, a storehouse, a party, a company by the way, a counselor, a multitude of counselors."
"And, drunk with my own madness, I shouted at him furiously, "Make life beautiful! Make life beautiful!"
"This programme would only really make sense and work properly if it was also broadcast on France's international television channel TV5. So I ended up with a double production, on France 2 and TV5."
"One cannot become a saint when one works sixteen hours a day."
"Our soul is not united to our body in the ordinary sense of these terms. It is immediately and directly united to God alone."
"In politics, stupidity is not a handicap."
"No one perfectly loves God who does not perfectly love some of his creatures."
"To what purpose is it to be artificially happy on the surface?"
"We used to wonder where war lived, what it was that made it so vile. And now we realize that we know where it lives... inside ourselves."
"The struggle to the top is in itself enough to fulfill the human heart. Sisyphus should be regarded as happy."
"A woman's perfume tells more about her than her handwriting."
"History is written by the winners."
"Thinking is learning all over again how to see, directing one's consciousness, making of every image a privileged place."
"The world is round so that friendship may encircle it."
"It was in Spain that [my generation] learned that one can be right and yet be beaten, that force can vanquish spirit, that there are times when courage is not its own recompense. It is this, doubtless, which explains why so many, the world over, feel the Spanish drama as a personal tragedy."
"In a way, literature is true than life,' he said to himself. 'On paper, you say exactly and completely what you feel. How easy it is to break things off on paper! You hate, you shout, you kill, you commit suicide; you carry things to the very end. And that's why it's false. But it's damned satisfying. In life, you're constantly denying yourself, and others are always contradicting you. On paper, I make time stand still and I impose my convictions on the whole world; they become the only reality."
"In order to govern, the question is not to follow out a more or less valid theory but to build with whatever materials are at hand. The inevitable must be accepted and turned to advantage."
"To kill a relative of whom you are tired is something. But to inherit his property afterwards, that is genuine pleasure."
"Vanity of science. Knowledge of physical science will not console me for ignorance of morality in time of affliction, but knowledge of morality will always console me for ignorance of physical science."
"But when from a long-distant past nothing subsists, after the people are dead, after the things are broken and scattered, taste and smell alone, more fragile but more enduring, more unsubstantial, more persistent, more faithful, remain poised a long time, like souls, remembering, waiting, hoping, amid the ruins of all the rest; and bear unflinchingly, in the tiny and almost impalpable drop of their essence, the vast structure of recollection."
"A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral."
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