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Quotes by French Authors
"One ought to look a good deal at oneself before thinking of condemning others."
"I have patience in all things " as far as the antechamber."
"The art of pleasing is the art of deception."
"I am more a friend of art than a producer of painting."
"The law cannot equalize mankind in spite of nature."
"The younger and healthier a woman is and the more her new and glossy body seems destined for eternal freshness, the less useful is artifice; but the carnal weakness of this prey that man takes and its ominous deterioration always have to be hidden from him...In any case, the more traits and proportions of a woman seem contrived, the more she delighted the heart of man because she seemed to escape the metamorphosis of natural things. The result is this strange paradox that by desiring to grasp nature, but transfigured, in woman, man destines her to artifice."
"A nation may lose its liberties in a day and not miss them in a century."
"King of England, and you, duke of Bedford, who call yourself regent of the kingdom of France... settle your debt to the king of Heaven; return to the Maiden, who is envoy of the king of Heaven, the keys to all the good towns you took and violated in France."
"In Italy, the Milanese are well organized but follow bourgeois taste. They adhere to certain codes of elegance, but not to individualism."
"What a delightful thing is the conversation of specialists! One understands absolutely nothing and it's charming."
"One month, two months, I am ready to accept any accord on this point that has the approval of the inspectors."
"Of all follies there is none greater than wanting to make the world a better place."
"Smile, for everyone lacks self-confidence and more than any other one thing a smile reassures them."
"All universal moral principles are idle fancies."
"A few observation and much reasoning lead to error; many observations and a little reasoning to truth."
"Writing is the only profession where no one considers you ridiculous if you earn no money."
"We won the European Championship last September and now the world title. That is some year for French beach soccer! Now comes the hard part. We have to keep improving and that's difficult because it's tough to do better than winning a world title."
"God is on everyone's side... and in the last analysis, he is on the side with plenty of money and large armies."
"Man is this plural and collective unity in which the unity of destination and the differences of destinies are to be understood through each other."
"Intelligence is nothing without delight."
"It did not seem likely that I was destined to undertake research on typhus."
"What I wish to show when I paint is the way I see things with my eyes and in my heart."
"But he did not tell her, for he realised how petty it would appear to her, and how different from what she had expected, less sensational and less touching; he was afraid, too, lest, disillusioned in the matter of art, she might at the same time be disillusioned in the greater matter of love."
"The eye is the most refined of our senses, the one which communicates most directly with our mind, our consciousness."
"The poet knows himself only on the condition that things resound in him, and that in him, at a single awakening, they and he come forth together out of sleep."
"One must live the way one thinks or end up thinking the way one has lived."
"Photography is an immediate reaction, drawing is a meditation."
"It is wise to apply the oil of refined politeness to the mechanism of friendship."
"We believe... that the applause of silence is the only kind that counts."
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