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Quotes by French Authors
"I respect only those who resist me, but I cannot tolerate them."
"Americans cannot realize how many chances for mental improvement they lose by their inveterate habit of keeping six conversations when there are twelve in the room."
"Whether you come from heaven or hell, what does it matter, O Beauty!"
"The painter must enclose himself within his work; he must respond not with words, but with paintings."
"What you have to do is enter the fiction of America, enter America as fiction. It is, indeed, on this fictive basis that it dominates the world."
"Common sense is perhaps the most equally divided, but surely the most underemployed, talent in the world."
"Chance, my dear, is the sovereign deity in child-bearing."
"It is only the impossible that is possible for God. He has given over the possible to the mechanics of matter and the autonomy of his creatures."
"I prefer to play and lose rather than win, because I know in advance I'm going to win."
"A sane mind should not be guilty of a logical fallacy, yet there are very fine minds incapable of following mathematical demonstrations."
"Of all days, the day on which one has not laughed is the one most surely wasted."
"Experience is the only prophecy of wise men."
"People are what you make them. A scornful look turns into a complete fool a man of average intelligence. A contemptuous indifference turns into an enemy a woman who, well treated, might have been an angel."
"The creative act lasts but a brief moment, a lightning instant of give-and-take, just long enough for you to level the camera and to trap the fleeting prey in your little box."
"Even now it is no longer composed of the traditional political class, but of a composite layer of corporate leaders, high-level administrators, and the heads of the major professional, labor, political, and religious organisations."
"How many people make themselves abstract to appear profound. The most useful part of abstract terms are the shadows they create to hide a vacuum."
"It must be admitted that there are some parts of the soul which we must entirely paralyse before we can live happily in this world."
"The artist discards all theories, both his own and those of others. He forgets everything when he is in front of his canvas."
"Morally, the world is both better and worse than it was. We are worse off than in the middle ages, or the 17th and 18th centuries, in that we have the atomic menace."
"Fairest and dearest, your wrath and anger are more heavy than I can bear; but learn that I cannot tell what you wish me to say without sinning against my honour too grievously."
"The only hope of socialism resides in those who have already brought about in themselves, as far as is possible in the society of today, that union between manual and intellectual labor which characterizes the society we are aiming at."
"Existence would be intolerable if we were never to dream."
"Religion is not a popular error; it is a great instinctive truth, sensed by the people, expressed by the people."
"A human being who wakened in the morning with a queesy stomach, with fifteen hours to kill before next bedtime, had not much use for freedom."
"To love for the sake of being loved is human, but to love for the sake of loving is angelic."
"Search for the truth is the noblest occupation of man; its publication is a duty."
"Young players need freedom of expression to develop as creative players... they should be encouraged to try skills without fear of failure."
"If the Resurrection is resurrection from the dead, all hope and freedom are in spite of death."
"I came to poetry through the urgent need to denounce injustice, exploitation, humiliation. I know that's not enough to change the world. But to remain silent would have been a kind of intolerable complicity."
"In the Church, considered as a social organism, the mysteries inevitably degenerate into beliefs."
"The tyrant always talks as if he's preserving the best interests of his people when he actually acts to undermine them."
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