Quotes by French Authors

He loved the extensive vaults where you could hear the night birds and the sea breeze; he loved the craggy ruins bound together by ivy, those dark halls, and any appearance of death and destruction. Having fallen so far from so high a position, he loved anything that had also fallen from a great height
Gustave Flaubert
All dreams have to come to an end.
Timothée de Fombelle
You is.Within Me!We are ONE.
Arnaud Saint-Paul
The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else.
Frédéric Bastiat
The truth is not believable to someone who has not lived it in his muscles.
Jean Hatzfeld
The history of music is mortal, but the idiocy of the guitar is eternal.
Milan Kundera
For the developing world, the past half-century has been a time of recurring hope and frequent disappointment. Great waves of change have washed over the landscape, from the crumbling of colonial hegemonies in mid-century to the recent collapse of Communist empires. But too often, what rushed in to replace the old order were empty hopes-not only in the false allure of state socialism, non-alignment and single-party rule, but also the false glories of romantic nationalism and narrow tribalism, and the false dawn of runaway individualism.
Aga Khan
There are two atheisms of which one is a purification of the notion of God.
Simone Weil
I tried to believe in God, but I confess to you that God meant nothing in my life, and that in my secret heart I too felt a void where my childhood faith had been. But probably this feeling belongs only to individuals in transition. The grandchildren of these pessimists will frolic in the freedom of their lives, and have more happiness than poor Christians darkened with fear of Hell.
Voltaire
And, on a wide view, I could see that it makes little difference whether one dies at the age of thirty or threescore and ten—since, in either case, other men and women will continue living, the world will go on as before. Also, whether I died now or forty years hence, this business of dying had to be got through, inevitably. Still, somehow this line of thought wasn't as consoling as it should have been; the idea of all those years of life in hand was a galling reminder!
Albert Camus
They had learned nothing and forgotten nothing.
Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord
Certainly all virtues are very dear to God, but humility pleases Him above all the others, and it seems that He can refuse it nothing.
Francis de Sales
Yes, this man had the persistence of an insect.
Patrick Modiano
Do not read, as children do, to amuse yourself, or like the ambitious, for the purpose of instruction. No, read in order to live.
Gustave Flaubert
Be classy. Anything but trashy.
Coco Chanel
He had the confidence of a man who had never been wounded.
Victor Hugo
Miss no single opportunity of making some small sacrifice, here by a smiling look, there by a kindly word; always doing the smallest right and doing it all for love.
Thérèse de Lisieux
It is a mistake to regard age as a downhill grade toward dissolution. Thereverse is true. As one grows older, one climbs with surprising strides.
George Sand
Continuity in everything is unpleasant.
Blaise Pascal
Moreover, most people, assuming they had not altogether abandoned religious observances, or did not combine them naively with a thoroughly immoral way of living, had replaced normal religious practice by more or less extravagant superstitions.
Albert Camus
I no longer know what the Lord wants of us... Even what we're doing here seems pointless to me! What's the use of the books I've brought with me? All those bookcases in the house? The things we learn, the things we discuss? Not so long ago, I was convinced that cultivating our minds would help us change the course of this world. I told myself, 'We women should change. Then we might be able to curb the folly of men.' I don't believe that now. As soon as I leave Magdala, as soon as I spend a day in the streets of Tarichea, I get the feeling we're becoming more and more learned and more and more useless.
Marek Halter
Thinking back on it, this evening, with my heart and my stomach all like jelly, I have finally concluded, maybe that’s what life is about: there’s a lot of despair, but also the odd moment of beauty, where time is no longer the same. It’s as if those strains of music created a sort of interlude in time, something suspended, an elsewhere that had come to us, an always within never. Yes, that’s it, an always within never. Don’t worry Renée, I won’t commit suicide and I won’t burn a thing. Because from now on, for you, I’ll be searching for those moments of always within never. Beauty, in this world.
Muriel Barbery
The wealth of the imperial countries is our wealth too. On the universal plane this affirmation, you may be sure, should on no account be taken to signify that we feel ourselves affected by the creations of Western arts or techniques. For in a very concrete way Europe has stuffed herself inordinately with the gold and raw materials of the colonial countries:Latin America, China, and Africa. From all these continents, under whose eyes Europe today raises up her tower of opulence, there has flowed out for centuries toward that same Europe diamonds and oil, silk and cotton, wood and exotic products. Europe is literally the creation of the Third World. The wealth which smothers her is that which was stolen from the underdeveloped peoples. The ports of Holland, the docks of Bordeaux and Liverpool were specialized in the Negro slave trade, and owe their renown to millions of deported slaves. So when we hear the head of a European state declare with his hand on his heart that he must come to the aid of the poor underdeveloped peoples, we do not tremble with gratitude. Quite the contrary; we say to ourselves: "It's a just reparation which will be paid to us.
Frantz Fanon
He who receives a good turn should never forget it he who does one should never remember it.
Pierre Charron
The perception of other people and the intersubjective world is problematic only for adults. The child lives in a world which he unhesitatingly believes accessible to all around him. He has no awares of himself or of others as private subjectives, nor does he suspect that all of us, himself included, are limited to one certain point of view of the world. That is why he subjects neither his thoughts, in which he believes as they present themselves, to any sort of criticism. He has no knowledge of points of view. For him men are empty heads turned towards one single, self-evident world where everything takes place, even dreams, which are, he thinks, in his room, and even thinking, since it is not distinct from words.
Maurice Merleau-Ponty
Martin in particular concluded that man was born to live either in the convulsions of misery, or in the lethargy of boredom.
Voltaire
The brief silence that follows is as tender as arainstorm of daisies.
Mathias Malzieu
This man Wellington is so stupid he does not know when he is beaten and goes on fighting.
Napoléon Bonaparte
For the taking of revenge, a man locks himself up alone and thinks. His stomach must be empty for his head to be full. Vengeance comes a little from the heart and a lot from the mind; one must take oneself apart from the noise of men and of things, even from what resembles them; only the voices of bells and of thunder are allowed. Let the room in which you meditate be dark, narrow and warm.
Xavier Forneret
A being afire with life cannot foresee death; in fact, by each of his deeds he denies that death exists. If death does take him, he is probably unaware of the fact; it amounts to no more for him than a shock or a spasm.
Marguerite Yourcenar
Men are all the same. Novelty amongst themselves displeases and upsets them – but if the novelty is wearing a skirt, they go crazy f
Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly
The situation is very slightly solemn and thus embarrassing, as are all such situations when after the initial lovemaking, the lovers confront a future they are suddenly required to take on.
Milan Kundera
It is thus religion infatuates man from his infancy, fills him with vanity and fanaticism: if he has a heated imagination it drives him on to fury; if he has activity, it makes him a madman, who is frequently as cruel to himself, as he is dangerous and incommodious to others: if, on the contrary, he be phlegmatic or of a slothful habit, he becomes melancholy and is useless to society.
Paul Henri Thiry d'Holbach
I have realized that we all have plague, and I have lost my peace. And today I am still trying to find it; still trying to understand all those others and not to be the enemy of anyone. I only know that one must do what one can to cease being plague-stricken, and that's the only way in which we can hope for some peace or, failing that, a decent death. This, and only this, can bring relief to men and, if not save them, at least do them the least harm possible and even, sometimes, a little good.
Albert Camus
We are so small; and what must one hold on to when one no longer recognizes one's own hands, nor one's step, nor even the small dose of everyday despair.
Danielle Collobert
If one were to build the house of happiness, the largest space would be the waiting room.
Jules Renard
To be ambitious for wealth and yet always expecting to be poor to be always doubting your ability to get what you long for is like trying to reach east by travelling west. There is no philosophy which will help a man to succeed when he is always doubting his ability to do so and thus attracting failure. No matter how hard you work for success if your thought is saturated with the fear of failure it will kill your efforts neutralize your endeavors and make success impossible.
Charles Baudouin
There is only one happiness in life to love and be loved.
George Sand
The very names we use to describe ancient ideas or vanished forms of social organization would be quite meaningless if we had not known living men.
Marc Bloch
A miscreant with coiffed, scented hair, a slender waist, the hips of a woman and the chest of a Prussian officer, with a finely tied cravat, by all girls admired. ~ [ introduction of character Montparnasse ]
Victor Hugo
Ô, Sunlight! The most precious gold to be found on Earth.
Roman Payne
And despite the clamors and the violence, we tried to preserve in our hearts the memory of a happy sea, of a remembered hill, the smile of a beloved face.
Albert Camus
În clipa când ți se impune să nu te gândești la un lucru, te vei gândi doar la el, obsesiv. Interdicția devine obligație.
Jean-Claude Carrière
Every reader, as he reads, is actually the reader of himself.
Marcel Proust
Art is vice. You don't wed it, you rape it.
Edgar Degas
In order to have great happiness you have to have great pain and unhap-piness - otherwise how would you know when you're happy?
Leslie Caron
It is nothing to die. It is frightful not to live.
Victor Hugo
The smooth folds of her dress concealed a tumultuous heart, and her modest lips told nothing of her torment. She was in love.
Gustave Flaubert
It is hard to free fools from the chains they revere.
Voltaire
A day without laughter is a day wasted.
Nicolas Chamfort
An unemployed father is always considered more detrimental to the family than an unemployed mother, and at the same time, child psychologists kept coming up with new responsibilities for parents that seemed to fall to the mother alone.
Élisabeth Badinter
Music is the silence between the notes.
Claude Debussy
To determine not to think of it was but to think of it still, to suffer from it still.
Marcel Proust
Confront all the angry thoughts, feelings, the jealousies and condemnations, to find their cause, seek the root of such feelings and then operate on that. Need of security and reassurance can cause criminal acts.
Anaïs Nin
Apollinaire said a poet should be 'of his time.' I say objects of the Digital Age belong in newspapers, not literature. When I read a novel, I don’t want credit cards; I want cash in ducats and gold doubloons.
Roman Payne
She's got feet like boats, whiskers like an American, and her undies are filthy.
Marcel Proust
How did writing come to me? Like bird’s down on my windowpane, in winter. Just then there rose in the heart a struggle of firebrands, which has, still now, not ended.
René Char
The only ones among you who will be really happy are those who will have sought and found how to serve.
Albert Schweitzer
I spent a long time in the study of the abstract sciences, and was disheartened by the small number of fellow-students in them. When I commenced the study of man, I saw that these abstract sciences are not suited to man, and that I was wandering further from my own state in examining them, than others in not knowing them. I pardoned their little knowledge; but I thought at least to find many companions in the study of man, and that it was the true study which is suited to him. I have been deceived; still fewer study it than geometry. It is only from want of knowing how to study this that we seek the other studies. But is it not that even here is not the knowledge which man should have, and that for the purposes of happiness it is better for him not to know himself?
Pascal
These two beings, who had loved each other so exclusively, and with so touching a love, and who had lived so long for each other, were now suffering beside one another and through one another; without speaking of it, without harsh feeling, and smiling all the while.
Victor Hugo