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Quotes by French Authors
"That is the hardest thing of all. It is much harder to judge yourself than to judge others. If you succeed in judging yourself, it's because you're truly a wise man."
"I hope that posterity will judge me kindly, not only as to the things which I have explained, but also to those which I have intentionally omitted so as to leave to others the pleasure of discovery."
"Our perfect companions never have fewer than four feet."
"No kingdom has shed more blood than the kingdom of Christ."
"He seriously thought that there is less harm in killing a man than producing a child: in the first case you are relieving someone of life, not his whole life but a half or a quarter or a hundredth part of that existence that is going to finish, that would finish without you; but as for the second, he would say, are you not responsible to him for all the tears he will shed, from the cradle to the grave? Without you he would never have been born, and why is he born? For your amusement, not for his, that's for sure; to carry your name, the name of a fool, I'll be bound " you may as well write that name on some wall; why do you need a man to bear the burden of three or four letters?"
"The narrative constructs the identity of the character, what can be called his or her narrative identity, in constructing that of the story told. It is the identity of the story that makes the identity of the character."
"A dog barks when his master is attacked. I would be a coward if I saw that God's truth is attacked and yet would remain silent."
"Believe me, there is no such thing as great suffering, great regret, great memory... Everything is forgotten, even a great love. That's what's sad about life, and also what's wonderful about it. There is only a way of looking at things, a way that comes to you every once in a while. That's why it's good to have had love in your life after all, to have had an unhappy passion - it gives you an alibi for the vague despairs we all suffer from."
"A constitution that is made for all nations is made for none."
"To me, photography is the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event."
"To achieve accurate knowledge of others, if such a thing were possible, we could only ever arrive at it through the slow and unsure recognition of our own initial optical inaccuracies. However, such knowledge is not possible: for, while our vision of others is being adjusted, they, who are not made of mere brute matter, are also changing; we think we have managed to see them more clearly, but they shift; and when we believe we have them fully in focus, it is merely our older images of them that we have clarified, but which are themselves already out of date."
"I ascribe a basic importance to the phenomenon of language. To speak means to be in a position to use a certain syntax, to grasp the morphology of this or that language, but it means above all to assume a culture, to support the weight of a civilization."
"Myth is neither a lie nor a confession: it is an inflexion."
"Science is built up of facts, as a house is with stones. But a collection of facts is no more a science than a heap of stones is a house."
"The misery and greatness of this world: it offers no truths, but only objects for love. Absurdity is king, but love saves us from it."
"Perfect numbers like perfect men are very rare."
"No man is excluded from calling upon God, the gate of salvation is set open unto all men: neither is there any other thing which keepeth us back from entering in, save only our own unbelief."
"All wars are civil wars, because all men are brothers."
"I may climb perhaps to no great heights, but I will climb alone."
"There is love of course. And then there's life, its enemy."
"The only way into truth is through one's own annihilation; through dwelling a long time in a state of extreme and total humiliation."
"In the same way that we need statesmen to spare us the abjection of exercising power, we need scholars to spare us the abjection of learning."
"The reason the Romans built their great paved highways was because they had such inconvenient footwear."
"When nothing else subsists from the past, after the people are dead, after the things are broken and scattered...the smell and taste of things remain poised a long time, like souls...bearing resiliently, on tiny and almost impalpable drops of their essence, the immense edifice of memory."
"We also had to bring with us some desired scientific equipment over to the station as well as assemble new machines. For that, I had to conduct two space walks."
"There is no work, however vile or sordid, that does not glisten before God."
"Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it."
"We must remember that Satan has his miracles, too."
"I wish I had invented blue jeans. They have expression, modesty, sex appeal, simplicity - all I hope for in my clothes."
"Coffee is a beverage that puts one to sleep when not drank."
"Logic is the technique by which we add conviction to truth."
"My life is very monotonous," the fox said. "I hunt chickens; men hunt me. All the chickens are just alike, and all the men are just alike. And, in consequence, I am a little bored."
"Man cannot remake himself without suffering, for he is both the marble and the sculptor."
"It was easier for me to think of a world without a creator than of a creator burdened with all the contradictions in the world."
"I may be a little like the grown-ups. I must have grown old."
"The order of the world is always right - such is the judgment of God. For God has departed, but he has left his judgment behind, the way the Cheshire Cat left his grin."
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