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Quotes by French Authors
"Have you noticed that life, with murders and catastrophes and fabulous inheritances, happens almost exclusively in newspapers?"
"I have always had trouble recognizing myself in the features of the intellectual playing his political role according to the screenplay that you are familiar with and whose heritage deserves to be questioned."
"The mystery of existence is the connection between our faults and our misfortunes."
"It is evident that one cannot say anything demonstrable about the problem before having resolved these preliminary questions, and yet we hardly possess the necessary information to solve some of them."
"It's easier to learn things for life by the age of 12 and not the age of 18. This is just my guess."
"Society is the union of men and not the men themselves."
"I was born and raised in a suburb of Paris by a working-class family."
"I had rapidly become aware there were problems with the Kalifa group."
"The moral law commands us to make the highest possible good in a world the final object of all our conduct."
"If the liberties of the American people are ever destroyed, they will fall by the hands of the clergy."
"Night, the beloved. Night, when words fade and things come alive. When the destructive analysis of day is done, and all that is truly important becomes whole and sound again. When man reassembles his fragmentary self and grows with the calm of a tree."
"Nature never said to me: Do not be poor; still less did she say: Be rich; her cry to me was always: Be independent."
"The future is made of the same stuff as the present."
"It is fortunate that diplomats have long noses since they usually cannot see beyond them."
"In societies where modern conditions of production prevail, all of life presents itself as an immense accumulation of spectacles. Everything that was directly lived has moved away into a representation."
"You can't always have the best team. It's always a compromise."
"It is not the young people that degenerate; they are not spoiled till those of mature age are already sunk into corruption."
"One cannot weep for the entire world, it is beyond human strength. One must choose."
"The first thing I have to do to erase my French accent is think that it is actually possible, whereas for the moment, I think it's not. I have a lot of work."
"Which is why we cannot say of the purloined letter that, like other objects, it must be or not be in a particular place but that unlike them it will be and not be where it is, wherever it goes."
"I went on television and I wouldn't say a word; I feel so stupid when I watch them again."
"Literature is without proofs. By which it must be understood that it cannot prove, not only what it says, but even that it is worth the trouble of saying it."
"Between good sense and good taste there lies the difference between a cause and its effect."
"The goal of modern propaganda is no longer to transform opinion but to arouse an active and mythical belief."
"We are servants rather than masters in mathematics."
"It seems to me that an author who has determined very new domains in literature is Gertrude Stein."
"Music, I feel, must be emotional first and intellectual second."
"In matters of the heart, nothing is true except the improbable."
"Solving a problem created by debt... by creating more debt is a fool's errand."
"Only those things are beautiful which are inspired by madness and written by reason."
"The hearts of women are like those little pieces of furniture with secret hiding - places, full of drawers fitted into each other; you go to a lot of trouble, break your nails, and in the bottom find some withered flower, a few grains of dust - or emptiness!"
"I wish I were a character actor. Of course, if I played hockey without a mask, I could become one."
"There are no such things as applied sciences, only applications of science."
"All colors are the friends of their neighbors and the lovers of their opposites."
"The big difference with Juliette and the others in that film is that she goes beyond acting."
"I am not a scientist. I am, rather, an impresario of scientists."
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