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Quotes by French Authors
"I love to watch the fine mist of the night come on, The windows and the stars illumined, one by one, The rivers of dark smoke pour upward lazily, And the moon rise and turn them silver. I shall see The springs, the summers, and the autumns slowly pass; And when old Winter puts his blank face to the glass, I shall close all my shutters, pull the curtains tight, And build me stately palaces by candlelight."
"When I opened my eyes I saw nothing but the pool of nocturnal sky, for I was lying on my back with out-stretched arms, face to face with that hatchery of stars. Only half awake, still unaware that those depths were sky, having no roof between those depths and me, no branches to screen them, no root to cling to, I was seized with vertigo and felt myself as if flung forth and plunging downward like a diver."
"You get the feeling that many of my guests feel that the French language gives them entry into a more cultivated, more intelligent world, more highly civilised too, with rules."
"I never knew any painter worthy of the name who paid the smallest attention to what a critic says, even in conversation."
"The stars are beautiful, because of a flower that cannot be seen... The desert is beautiful," the little prince added. And that was true. I have always loved the desert. One sits down on a desert sand dune, sees nothing, hears nothing. Yet through the silence something throbs, and gleams... "What makes the desert beautiful," said the little prince, "is that somewhere it hides a well..." I was astonished by a sudden understanding of that mysterious radiation of the sands."
"Abolishers of the soul (materialists) are necessarily abolishers of hell, they, certainly, are interested. At all events, they are people who fear to live again--lazy people."
"Grown-ups love figures. When you talk to them about a new friend, they never ask questions about essential matters."
"They might in the future more than ever before engage in hunting beavers."
"There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide."
"Think of the ills from which you are exempt."
"Reality seems valueless by comparison with the dreams of fevered imaginations; reality is therefore abandoned."
"Something more terrible than a hell where one suffers may be imagined, and that is a hell where one is bored."
"Just as our eyes need light in order to see, our minds need ideas in order to conceive."
"It is therefore senseless to think of complaining since nothing foreign has decided what we feel, what we live, or what we are."
"The most mediocre of males feels himself a demigod as compared with women."
"There comes a time in history when the man who dares to say that two and two make four is punished with death. The schoolteacher is well aware of this. And the question is not one of knowing what punishment or reward attends the making of this calculation. The question is that of knowing whether two and two do make four."
"I find war detestable but those who praise it without participating in it even more so."
"So the little prince tamed the fox. And when the time for him to leave was approaching:"Oh!", said the fox. "I am going to cry.""It's your own fault," said the little prince. "I never wished you any harm; but you wanted me to tame you...""I know," said the fox."And now you're going to cry!" said the little prince."I know," said the fox."So you have gained nothing from it at all!""Yes, I have gained something," said the fox, "because of the colour of the corn."
"The Dutch fetishes who converted me tell me every Sunday that the blacks and whites are all children of one father, whom they call Adam. As for me, I do not understand anything of genealogies; but if what these preachers say is true, we are all second cousins; and you must allow that it is impossible to be worse treated by our relations than we are."
"Originality exists in every individual because each of us differs from the others. We are all primary numbers divisible only by ourselves."
"I want to tell you that I think this war is a great mistake."
"The grandeur of a profession is...above all, uniting men: there is only one true luxury, that of human relationships."
"When I write down my thoughts, they do not escape me. This action makes me remember my strength which I forget at all times. I educate myself proportionately to my captured thought. I aim only to distinguish the contradiction between my mind and nothingness."
"So much the worse for those who fear wine, for it is because they have some bad thoughts which they are afraid the liquor will extract from their hearts."
"Existentialism's first move is to make every man aware of what he is and to make the full responsibility of his existence rest on him."
"If it be well weighed, to say that a man lieth, is as much to say, as that he is brave towards God and a coward towards men."
"God joins us together by means of the body, in consequence of the laws of the communication of movements. He affects us with the same feelings in consequence of the laws of the conjunction of body and soul."
"Riches like glory or health have no more beauty or pleasure than their possessor is pleased to lend them."
"Patriotism is a kind of religion; it is the egg from which wars are hatched."
"Throw off your worries when you throw off your clothes at night."
"Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love, and then, for a second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire."
"Ugliness is in a way superior to beauty because it lasts."
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