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Quotes by French Authors
"One is still what one is going to cease to be and already what one is going to become. One lives one's death, one dies one's life."
"The modes of expression of men of genius differ as much as their souls, and it is impossible to say that in some among them, drawing and color are better or worse than in others."
"If a million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing."
"A negative judgment gives you more satisfaction than praise, provided it smacks of jealousy."
"There is no shorter path for joining a neutral existential anthropology, according to philosophy, with the existential decision before God, according to the Bible."
"When we see a natural style, we are astonished and charmed; for we expected to see an author, and we find a person."
"I do not literally paint that table, but the emotion it produces upon me."
"I care not so much what I am to others as what I am to myself. I will be rich by myself, and not by borrowing."
"At times like that it's difficult to remember what's at stake, that history is in the making. As a player you feel so cut off sometimes, it can be tough... Which is why it is an enormous advantage to play at home."
"Two persons cannot long be friends if they cannot forgive each other's little failings."
"The great gift of conversation lies less in displaying it ourselves than in drawing it out of others. He who leaves your company pleased with himself and his own cleverness is perfectly well pleased with you."
"I walk firmer and more secure up hill than down."
"What fun it would be to be poor, as long as one was excessively poor! Anything in excess is most exhilarating."
"But, you know, I feel more fellowship with the defeated than with saints. Heroism and sanctity don't really appeal to me, I imagine. What interests me is being a man."
"The infectiousness of crime is like that of the plague."
"To return to antiquity [in literature]: that has been done. To return to the Middle Ages: that too has been done. Remains the present day. But the ground is shaky: so where can you set the foundations? An answer to this question must be found if one is to produce anything vital and hence lasting. All this disturbs me so much that I no longer like to be spoken to about it."
"To a poet, silence is an acceptable response, even a flattering one."
"I have had the problem of seeing my male model go to Italy and... stay there."
"There is not one blade of grass, there is no color in this world that is not intended to make us rejoice."
"With color one obtains an energy that seems to stem from witchcraft."
"The process of my transformation came to a head with my discovery of St. Francis of Assisi during a pilgrimage I went on with a scout troop from my school."
"Basic research is very useful, but it should be more geared toward application than it was before."
"Intuition comes very close to clairvoyance; it appears to be the extrasensory perception of reality."
"I'm not sure they understand everything about racing cars. I am not sure that this is wise."
"Vices are often habits rather than passions."
"The impressionists, Debussy, Faure, in France, did take a few steps forward."
"My most resolute opponents believe that I am too visible, that I am a little too alive, that my name echoes too much in the texts which they nevertheless claim to be inaccessible."
"I hate victims who respect their executioners."
"One does not substitute oneself for the past, one merely adds to it a new link."
"These critics organize and practice in my case a sort of obsessive personality cult which philosophers should know how to question and above all, to moderate."
"I am the slave of my baptism. Parents, you have caused my misfortune, and you have caused your own."
"God exists since mathematics is consistent, and the Devil exists since we cannot prove it."
"The writer of originality, unless dead, is always shocking, scandalous; novelty disturbs and repels."
"In order to stabilize world population, we must eliminate 350,000 per day."
"I am not a Hollywood Jew and I won't ever be one."
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