top of page
.png){kind=small}
Quotes by French Authors
"I never wanted to weigh more heavily on a man than a bird."
"Jazz music is an intensified feeling of nonchalance."
"The Covenant of the League of Nations had envisaged sponsoring only the protection of certain categories of men: national minorities and populations of territories controlled by other countries."
"Friendship is the shadow of the evening, which increases with the setting sun of life."
"Nothing is more dangerous than a friend without discretion; even a prudent enemy is preferable."
"But, at the moment, when I step on the pitch, when I have the ball I know it's mine. It's just a feeling."
"I might have had trouble saving France in 1946 - I didn't have television then."
"To attempt the destruction of our passions is the height of folly. What a noble aim is that of the zealot who tortures himself like a madman in order to desire nothing, love nothing, feel nothing, and who, if he succeeded, would end up a complete monster!"
"Everyone calls himself a friend, but only a fool relies on it; nothing is commoner than the name, nothing rarer than the thing."
"For much of my life there was no place where the things I wanted to investigate were of interest to anyone."
"Great love affairs start with Champagne and end with tisane."
"Nothing is more admirable than the fortitude with which millionaires tolerate the disadvantages of their wealth."
"From the gut comes the strut, and where hunger reigns, strength abstains."
"Our judgments judge us, and nothing reveals us, exposes our weaknesses, more ingeniously than the attitude of pronouncing upon our fellows."
"There are only three events in a man's life; birth, life, and death; he is not conscious of being born, he dies in pain, and he forgets to live."
"In poetry everything which must be said is almost impossible to say well."
"I try to see my films just once. it's like a dream you've been through when it's been intense, and you just have to go through it once more just to make sure you've had it."
"Governing today means giving acceptable signs of credibility. It is like advertising and it is the same effect that is achieved - commitment to a scenario."
"Should we continue to look upwards? Is the light we can see in the sky one of those which will presently be extinguished? The ideal is terrifying to behold... brilliant but threatened on all sides by the dark forces that surround it: nevertheless, no more in danger than a star in the jaws of the clouds."
"Men blush less for their crimes than for their weaknesses and vanity."
"Our expression and our words never coincide, which is why the animals don't understand us."
"Everyone has talent at twenty-five. The difficulty is to have it at fifty."
"There is no philosophy without the art of ignoring objections."
"Of course, we also have the responsibility to win games and the difficulty in the job is to combine both."
"The Olympic Games were created for the exhaltation of the individual athlete."
"Still today, I cannot cross the threshold of a teaching institution without physical symptoms, in my chest and my stomach, of discomfort or anxiety. And yet I have never left school."
"There is no God, Nature sufficeth unto herself; in no wise hath she need of an author."
"Even in the centuries which appear to us to be the most monstrous and foolish, the immortal appetite for beauty has always found satisfaction."
"There can be no prestige without mystery, for familiarity breeds contempt."
"You can work, shop, do everything from home, and I find this unsettling."
"I've always been able to decide what was more important at different points in my life, but I never gave up personal things to work, never."
"It took them only an instant to cut of that head, but it is unlikely that a hundred years will suffice to reproduce a singular one."
"Communism is inequality, but not as property is. Property is exploitation of the weak by the strong. Communism is exploitation of the strong by the weak."
"The last act is bloody, however pleasant all the rest of the play is: a little earth is thrown at last upon our head, and that is the end forever."
"A marriage without conflicts is almost as inconceivable as a nation without crises."
"You would hardly believe how difficult it is to place a figure alone on a canvas, and to concentrate all the interest on this single and universal figure and still keep it living and real."
bottom of page