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Quotes by French Authors
"It is dreadful to think that behind me my own past is no longer anything but shifting darkness."
"Liberality consists less in giving a great deal than in gifts well-timed."
"One must command from each what each can preform."
"The facts of religion were convincing only to those who were already convinced."
"All things can be deadly to us, even the things made to serve us; as in nature walls can kill us, and stairs can kill us, if we do not walk circumspectly."
"Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies."
"Ant swarming CityCity full of dreamsWhere in broad day the specter tugs your sleeve."
"Faith declares what the senses do not see but not the contrary of what they see."
"The field of consciousness is tiny. It accepts only one problem at a time. Get into a fist fight put your mind on the strategy of the fight and you will not feel the other fellow's punches."
"There is a natural prejudice which prompts men to despise whomsoever has been their inferior long after he has become their equal."
"She gives birth in pain, she heals males' wounds, she nurses the newborn and buries the dead; of man she knows all that offends his pride and humiliates his will. While inclining before him and submitting flesh to spirit, she remains on the carnal borders of the spirit; and she contests the sharpness of hard masculine architecture by softening the angles; she introduces free luxury and unforeseen grace."
"Better to die on one's feet than to live on one's knees."
"Pure love and suspicion cannot dwell together: at the door where the latter enters, the former makes its exit."
"Unintelligent persons are like weeds that thrive in good ground; they love to be amused in proportion to the degree in which they weary themselves."
"If I were to share Jaques' existence I would find it hard to hold my own against him, for already I found his nihilism contagious."
"There is no reality except in action. Man is nothing else than his plan; he exists only to the extent that he fulfills himself; he is therefore nothing else than the ensemble of his acts, nothing else than his life."
"I shall never again admire a merely brave man."
"There is neither happiness nor misery in the world; there is only the comparison of one state with another, nothing more. He who has felt the deepest grief is best able to experience supreme happiness. We must have felt what it is to die, Morrel, that we may appreciate the enjoyments of life. " Live, then, and be happy, beloved children of my heart, and never forget, that until the day God will deign to reveal the future to man, all human wisdom is contained in these two words, 'Wait and Hope."
"Atheistic existentialism, of which I am a representative, declares with greater consistency that if God does not exist there is at least one being whose existence comes before its essence, a being which exists before it can be defined by any conception of it. That being is man...."
"Yet man will never be perfect until he learns to create and destroy; he does know how to destroy, and that is half the battle."
"Au milieu de l'hiver, j'ai dA©couvert en moi un invincible A©tA©."
"If the word doesn't exist, invent it; but first be sure it doesn't exist."
"But, when nothing subsists of an old past, after the death of people, after the destruction of things, alone, frailer but more enduring, more immaterial, more persistent, more faithful, smell and taste still remain for a long time, like souls, remembering, waiting, hoping, on the ruin of all the rest, bearing without giving way, on their almost impalpable droplet, the immense edifice of memory."
"When I give a lecture, I accept that people look at their watches, but what I do not tolerate is when they look at it and raise it to their ear to find out if it stopped."
"The only nations which deny the utility of provincial liberties are those which have fewest of them; in other words, those who are unacquainted with the institution are the only persons who passed censure upon it."
"The art of governing consists in not letting men grow old in their jobs."
"It is neither the statesman nor the friend who is asking your help and assistance, but simply the man."
"We love women in proportion to their degree of strangeness to us."
"It is indeed difficult to imagine how men who have entirely renounced the habit of managing their own affairs could be successful in choosing those who ought to lead them. It is impossible to believe that a liberal, energetic, and wise government can ever emerge from the ballots of a nation of servants."
"There are two kinds of people one can call reasonable: those who serve God with all their heart because they know him, and those who seek him with all their heart because they do not know him."
"Even if the whole earth and sea were turned to gold, they could hardly satisfy the avarice of a woman... You can more easily scratch a diamond with your fingernail than you can by any human ingenuity get a woman to consent to giving any of her savings."
"Voici mon secret. Il est trA s simple: on ne voit bien qu'avec le cA"ur. L'essentiel est invisible pour les yeux."
"One always dies too soon or too late. And yet, life is there, finished: the line is drawn, and it must all be added up. You are nothing other than your life."
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