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Quotes by French Authors
"Life begets life. Energy creates energy. It is by spending oneself that one becomes rich."
"I try to find different ways of expressing myself. Without that I will die."
"In its entirety, probably, it follows us at every instant; all that we have felt, thought and willed from our earliest infancy is there, leaning over the present which is about to join it, pressing against the portals of consciousness that would fain leave it outside."
"Civilization exists precisely so that there may be no masses but rather men alert enough never to constitute masses."
"The best way to turn a woman's head is to tell her she has a beautiful profile."
"In love, women are professionals, men are amateurs."
"I demonstrated the characteristics of experimental fever. It appears after an incubation period which is never less than five days. It follows the same pattern as natural fever in man, but is of shorter duration and less pronounced."
"The flower is a jumble of thighs, the sun's harem - the most oriental thing imaginable."
"In sum, thought and reflection have been rendered thoroughly pointless by the circumstances in which modern men and women live and act."
"Two elements are needed to form a truth - a fact and an abstraction."
"The little may contrast with the great, in painting, but cannot be said to be contrary to it. Oppositions of colors contrast; but there are also colors contrary to each other, that is, which produce an ill effect because they shock the eye when brought very near it."
"Think of war as a game of Russian roulette. It is a game of chance with your life as the grand prize."
"I think that the proposed constitution is one of the European legal documents with the strongest social dimension I have seen since I began following European issues."
"A mediocre mind thinks it writes divinely; a good mind thinks it writes reasonably."
"Oh, yes, that never happened to me in my life before. It was a risky film, and I warned the producer."
"As a rule, all heroism is due to a lack of reflection, and thus it is necessary to maintain a mass of imbeciles. If they once understand themselves the ruling men will be lost."
"Society is endangered not by the great profligacy of a few, but by the laxity of morals amongst all."
"The first problem of the media is posed by what does not get translated, or even published in the dominant political languages."
"Love is a springtime plant that perfumes everything with its hope, even the ruins to which it clings."
"From the practical point of view, the susceptibility to infection of the guinea pig proved to be the most useful step forward. Today, all laboratories use this animal for preserving the virus."
"Well, I know that 500,000 children died in Iraq because of the embargo."
"Bodily passion, which has been so unjustly decried, compels its victims to display every vestige that is in them of unselfishness and generosity, and so effectively that they shine resplendent in the eyes of all beholders."
"I am surprised that I cannot recall whether my desire to become a minister transformed itself into a wish to lead the more militant life of missionary, by a slow process or suddenly."
"The main object of a revolution is the liberation of man... not the interpretation and application of some transcendental ideology."
"When the shot is afterwards subjected to white light, colour appears because of selective reflection."
"A central administration enervates the nations in which it exists by incessantly diminishing their public spirit. If such an administration succeeds in convincing all the disposable resources of a people, it impairs at least the renewal of those resources."
"I am not made for politics because I am incapable of wanting or accepting the death of the adversary."
"All the products of one period have something in common; the artists who illustrate the poetry of their generation are the same artists who are employed by the big financial houses. And nothing reminds me so much of the monthly parts of Notre-Dame de Paris, and of various books by GA©rard de Nerval, that used to hang outside the grocer's door at Combray, than does, in its rectangular and flowery border, supported by recumbent river-gods, a 'personal share' in the Water Company."
"Gentleness doesn't get work done unless you happen to be a hen laying eggs."
"I believe that truth has only one face: that of a violent contradiction."
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