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Quotes by French Authors
"To take photographs means to recognize - simultaneously and within a fraction of a second - both the fact itself and the rigorous organization of visually perceived forms that give it meaning. It is putting one's head, one's eye and one's heart on the same axis."
"The senses are the organs by which man places himself in connexion with exterior objects."
"I believe that transatlantic relations are very important and that President Bush's visit to Brussels, in a few days, will have a major impact on that."
"A happy marriage is a long conversation which always seems too short."
"One weeps not save when one is afraid, and that is why kings are tyrants."
"Talent does whatever it wants to do. Genius does only what it can."
"It is better to debate a question without settling it than to settle a question without debating it."
"Love often leads on to ambition, but seldom does one return from ambition to love."
"The king must die so that the country can live."
"When I follow the finals of the European Cups, I look at all the aspects surrounding protocol, to get some ideas. I am interested in personalities, sponsors and the stands. But as soon as the whistle goes, it's all on the pitch."
"If you live long enough, you'll see that every victory turns into a defeat."
"Common sense is the most fairly distributed thing in the world, for each one thinks he is so well-endowed with it that even those who are hardest to satisfy in all other matters are not in the habit of desiring more of it than they already have."
"I do not believe in pure idioms. I think there is naturally a desire, for whoever speaks or writes, to sign in an idiomatic, irreplaceable manner."
"Success is often achieved by those who don't know that failure is inevitable."
"I gave everything in my career so I have no regrets at all."
"And everything stopped quite rapidly because I knew that nobody in Europe was able to go to space. It was the privilege of being either American or Russian."
"No government ought to be without censors; and where the press is free, no one ever will. Chance is the pseudonym of God when he did not want to sign."
"We can recognize the dawn and the decline of love by the uneasiness we feel when alone together."
"The most successful ideological effects are those which have no need for words, and ask no more than complicitous silence."
"Perhaps I am doomed to retrace my steps under the illusion that I am exploring, doomed to try and learn what I should simply recognize, learning a mere fraction of what I have forgotten."
"I wish that every human life might be pure transparent freedom."
"I still find it hard to push my own limits. I know where my limits are and that I always have to push myself."
"Merit, however inconsiderable, should be sought for and rewarded. Methods are the master of masters."
"Invention consists in avoiding the constructing of useless contraptions and in constructing the useful combinations which are in infinite minority."
"I have always observed that to succeed in the world one should seem a fool, but be wise."
"Color does not add a pleasant quality to design - it reinforces it."
"The most dangerous moment for a bad government is when it begins to reform."
"I prefer the folly of enthusiasm to the indifference of wisdom."
"The absurd is the essential concept and the first truth."
"It is not humiliating to be unhappy. Physical suffering is sometimes humiliating, but the suffering of being cannot be, it is life."
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