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Quotes by French Authors
"It is fortunate to be of high birth, but it is no less so to be of such character that people do not care to know whether you are or are not."
"If I became a philosopher, if I have so keenly sought this fame for which I'm still waiting, it's all been to seduce women basically."
"And I also see how this body influences external images: it gives back movement to them."
"'Til the infallibility of human judgements shall have been proved to me, I shall demand the abolition of the penalty of death."
"They may call me a sinner, but I am at peace with myself."
"Keep good company - that is, go to the Louvre."
"The human mind, I believe, cares for the True only in the general character of an epoch."
"The tocsin you hear today is not an alarm but an alert: it sounds the charge against our enemies."
"Marius and Cosette were in the dark in regard to each other. They did not speak, they did not bow, they were not acquainted; they saw each other; and, like the stars in the sky separated by millions of leagues, they lived by gazing upon each other."
"Time heals griefs and quarrels, for we change and are no longer the same persons. Neither the offender nor the offended are any more themselves."
"The Ancient Mariner said to Neptune during a great storm 'O God you will save me if you wish but I am going to go on holding my tiller straight.'"
"Evil. Mistrust those who rejoice at it even more than those who do it."
"There is no truer cause of unhappiness amongst men than, where naturally expecting charity and benevolence, they receive harm and vexation."
"Il me semble que je serais toujours bien la ou je ne suis pas.It seems to me that I will always be happy in the place where I am not."
"My true friends have always given me that supreme proof of devotion, a spontaneous aversion for the man I loved."
"Man's great misfortune is that he has no organ, no kind of eyelid or brake, to mask or block a thought, or all thought, when he wants to."
"Furthermore, it is not distorting history to say that it was largely through the efforts and propaganda of our International Federation that the government of the U.S.S.R. was recognized by the majority of the great powers."
"The man who can make others laugh secures more votes for a measure than the man who forces them to think."
"After each experience, you grow up, you get enriched with something, and you don't know how you're going to be in six months, you don't know what you're going to want, what you're going to need."
"When people complain of life, it is almost always because they have asked impossible things of it."
"A lover always thinks of his mistress first and himself second; with a husband it runs the other way."
"A science which does not bring us nearer to God is worthless."
"I believe though I do not comprehend, and I hold by faith what I cannot grasp with the mind."
"Prayer holds together the shattered fragments of the creation. It makes history possible."
"Never resist a sentence you like, in which language takes its own pleasure and in which, after having abused it for so long, you are stupefied by its innocence."
"He [Bloch] was one of those touchy, highly-strung people who cannot bear to have made a blunder, will not admit it to themselves, and whose whole day is ruined by it."
"There is no man, however wise, who has not at some period of his youth said things, or lived in a way the consciousness of which is so unpleasant to him in later life that he would gladly, if he could, expunge it from his memory."
"As soon as men know that they can kill without fear of punishment or blame, they kill; or at least they encourage killers with approving smiles."
"I'm not always the nicest person to meet, because I forget very easily that I'm an actress when I'm not working."
"Note, besides, that it is no more immoral to directly rob citizens than to slip indirect taxes into the price of goods that they cannot do without."
"Vegetation is the basic instrument the creator uses to set all of nature in motion."
"Let us leave pretty women to men devoid of imagination."
"At the side of Enjolras, who represented the logic of revolution, was Combeferre, representing its philosophy. The difference between logic and philosophy is that one can decide upon war, whereas the other can only be fulfilled by peace."
"Carry on any enterprise as if all future success depended on it."
"There are three species of government: republican, monarchical, and despotic."
"The happiness of most people is not ruined by great catastrophes or fatal errors, but by the repetition of slowly destructive little things."
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