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Quotes by French Authors
"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."
"Men spend their time in following a ball or a hare it is the pleasure even of kings."
"He was free, free in every way, free to behave like a fool or a machine, free to accept, free to refuse, free to equivocate; to marry, to give up the game, to drag this death weight about with him for years to come. He could do what he liked, no one had the right to advise him, there would be for him no Good or Evil unless he thought them into being."
"Human beings must be known to be loved but Divine beings must be loved to be known."
"There is a God shaped vacuum in the heart of every man which cannot be filled by any created thing, but only by God, the Creator, made known through Jesus."
"Imagination disposes of everything; it creates beauty, justice, and happiness, which are everything in this world."
"Having money is a way of being free of money."
"After awhile you could get used to anything."
"She was waiting, but she didn't know for what. She was aware only of her solitude, and of the penetrating cold, and of a greater weight in the region of her heart."
"You are -- your life, and nothing else."
"... so in that moment all the flowers in our garden and in M. Swann's park, and the water-lilies on the Vivonne and the good folk of the village and their little dwellings and the parish church and the whole of Combray and of its surroundings, taking their proper shapes and growing solid, sprang into being, town and gardens alike, from my cup of tea."
"I made this [letter] very long, because I did not have the leisure to make it shorter."
"I am not virtuous. Our sons will be if we shed enough blood to give them the right to be."
"Melancholy and sadness are the start of doubt... doubt is the beginning of despair; despair is the cruel beginning of the differing degrees of wickedness."
"Experiences teaches us that to love is not to gaze at one another but to gaze together in the same direction."
"Acting is a question of absorbing other people's personalities and adding some of your own experience."
"A man wants to earn money in order to be happy, and his whole effort and the best of a life are devoted to the earning of that money. Happiness is forgotten; the means are taken for the end."
"The artist forges himself to the others, midway between the beauty he cannot do without and the community he cannot tear himself away from. That is why true artists scorn nothing: they are obliged to understand rather than to judge."
"The superfluous is very necessary."
"It's terrifying, that unconditional love you have for a child. I still wonder if she really came from me, from my womb. It's a miracle. I don't understand it. I live it very intensely."
"Love knows no limit to its endurance, no end to its trust, no fading of its hope; it can outlast anything. Love still stands when all else has fallen."
"Love in marriage should be the accomplishment of a beautiful dream, and not, as it too often is, the end."
"The poetic act consists of suddenly seeing that an idea splits up into a number of equal motifs and of grouping them; they rhyme."
"I couldn't quite understand how an ordinary man's good qualities could become crushing accusations against a guilty man."
"Without freedom, no art; art lives only on the restraints it imposes on itself, and dies of all others."
"I beg of you always to dwell upon the necessity of a thorough understanding of principles, in order to stop the vivacity of his mind, and please do not forget to meditate upon the subject of our discussion."
"Women are most fascinating between the ages of 35 and 40 after they have won a few races and know how to pace themselves. Since few women ever pass 40, maximum fascination can continue indefinitely."
"To think is of itself to be useful; it is always and in all cases a striving toward God."
"A step lower and strangeness creeps in: perceiving that the world is "dense", sensing to what a degree a stone is foreign and irreducible to us, with what intensity nature or a landscape can negate us. At the heart of all beauty lies something inhuman, and these hills, the softness of the sky, the outline of these trees at this very minute lose the illusory meaning with which we had clothed them, henceforth more remote than a lost paradise. The primitive hostility of the world rises up to face us across millenia."
"We get into the habit of living before acquiring the habit of thinking. In that race which daily hastens us towards death, the body maintains its irreparable lead."
"As our bodies live upon the earth and find sustenance in the fruits which it produces, so our minds feed on the same truths as the intelligible and immutable substance of the divine Word contains."
"You talk a lot about this amazing flow of time but you hardly see it. you see a women, you think that one day she'll be old, only you don't see her grow old. But there are moments when you think you see her grow old and feel yourself growing old with her: this is the feeling of adventure."
"Capabilities are clearly manifested only when they have been realized."
"Everyone without exception is searching for happiness."
"The heart of a mother is a deep abyss at the bottom of which you will always find forgiveness."
"L'honneste est stable et permanent."
"Now I can broach the notion of suicide. It has already been felt what solution might be given. At this point the problem is reversed. It was previously a question of finding out whether or not life had to have a meaning to be lived. It now becomes clear, on the contrary, that it will be lived all the better if it has no meaning. Living an experience, a particular fate, is accepting it fully. Now, no one will live this fate, knowing it to be absurd, unless he does everything to keep before him that absurd brought to light by consciousness."
"Freedom and constraint are two aspects of the same necessity the necessity of being the man you are and not another. You are free to be that man but not free to be another."
"The ideal form of government is democracy tempered with assassination."
"Man is not only that which he conceives himself to be, but that which he wills himself to be..."
"I sit in the sky like a sphinx misunderstood; My heart of snow is wed to the whiteness of swans; I hate the movement that displaces the rigid lines, With lips untaught neither tears nor laughter do I know."
"From the moment that man believes neither in God nor in immortal life, he becomes 'responsible for everything alive, for everything that, born of suffering, is condemned to suffer from life.' It is he, and he alone, who must discover law and order. Then the time of exile begins, the endless search for justification, the aimless nostalgia, 'the most painful, the most heartbreaking question, that of the heart which asks itself: where can I feel at home?"
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