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Quotes by French Authors
"The world has just got more dangerous because the things we use have got more dangerous."
"A common danger tends to concord. Communism is the exploitation of the strong by the weak. In Communism, inequality comes from placing mediocrity on a level with excellence."
"Know thyself. A maxim as pernicious as it is ugly. Whoever studies himself arrest his own development. A caterpillar who seeks to know himself would never become a butterfly."
"I didn't know the first thing about the people around me, but that didn't matter: I was in a new world; and I had the feelings that at last I had put my finger on the secret of freedom."
"We must stress that the euro has been beneficial to the European Union because, otherwise, in this context of international turmoil, every country would have to devalue their currencies."
"Fish die belly upward, and rise to the surface. Its their way of falling."
"Why are you drinking? - the little prince asked.- In order to forget - replied the drunkard.- To forget what? - inquired the little prince, who was already feeling sorry for him.- To forget that I am ashamed - the drunkard confessed, hanging his head.- Ashamed of what? - asked the little prince who wanted to help him.- Ashamed of drinking! - concluded the drunkard, withdrawing into total silence.And the little prince went away, puzzled.'Grown-ups really are very, very odd', he said to himself as he continued his journey."
"A poet is a man who puts up a ladder to a star and climbs it while playing a violin."
"The possibility of divorce renders both marriage partners stricter in their observance of the duties they owe to each other. Divorces help to improve morals and to increase the population."
"A man should be mourned at his birth, not at his death."
"I owe much to my friends; but, all things considered, it strikes me that I owe even more to my enemies. The real person springs life under a sting even better than under a caress."
"The nations of our time cannot prevent the conditions of men from becoming equal; but it depends upon themselves whether the principle of equality is to lead them to servitude or freedom, to knowledge or barbarism, to prosperity or to wretchedness."
"I love life in spite of all that mars it. I love friendship, jokes and laughter."
"Women must tell men always that they are the strong ones. They are the big, the strong, the wonderful. In truth, women are the strong ones. It is just my opinion, I am not a professor."
"We photographers deal in things which are continually vanishing, and when they have vanished there is no contrivance on earth can make them come back again. We cannot develop and print a memory."
"They say that the best furniture and clothing design from the '50s and '60s is Scandinavian or Milanese."
"Children have neither a past nor a future. Thus they enjoy the present, which seldom happens to us."
"Raillery is a mode of speaking in favor of one's wit at the expense of one's better nature."
"Acting is a tough business, and you need to be in good shape mentally and physically."
"But above all, in order to be, never try to seem."
"At least I have the modesty to admit that lack of modesty is one of my failings."
"How badly arranged the world is. What is the purpose of ugliness, suffering, sadness? Why our powerless dreams? Why everything?"
"I must be more sensible and realize that at my age, illusions are hardly permitted and they will always destroy me."
"My soul is not my own any more. I cannot live like I want to. I am going to give up films."
"As favor and riches forsake a man, we discover in him the foolishness they concealed, and which no one perceived before."
"The two operations of our understanding, intuition and deduction, on which alone we have said we must rely in the acquisition of knowledge."
"I have often seen people uncivil by too much civility, and tiresome in their courtesy."
"I think it is a mistake to identify a movie according to its language, as if movies were literature."
"Hard times arouse an instinctive desire for authenticity."
"Long years must pass before the truths we have made for ourselves become our very flesh."
"It's very difficult to marry into another civilization."
"When the body of the people is possessed of the supreme power, it is called a democracy."
"What is amazing for a woman of my age is that I change as the world is changing-and changing very, very fast. I don't think my mother had that opportunity to change."
"Religious wars are not caused by the fact that there is more than one religion, but by the spirit of intolerance... the spread of which can only be regarded as the total eclipse of human reason."
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