Quotes by French Authors - Page 104

Children have neither a past nor a future. Thus they enjoy the present which seldom happens to us.
Jean de La Bruyère
I would simply ask why so many critics, so many writers, so many philosophers take such satisfaction in professing that the experience of a work of art is ineffable, that it escapes by definition all rational understanding; why are they so eager to concede without a struggle the defeat of knowledge; and where does their irrepressible need to belittle rational understanding come from, this rage to affirm the irreducibility of the work of art, or, to use a more suitable word, its transcendence.
Pierre Bourdieu
I woke up, smiling to myself at this dream with its allegorical aspects but with no real meaning.
Jean de Berg
The lot of the brideto be wed before beddesired until rotten.The lot of the authorto be read before bedadmired then forgotten.
Roman Payne
Haleine contre haleine, échauffe-moi la vie,Mille et mille baisers donne-moi je te prie,Amour veut tout sans nombre, amour n’a point de loiTranslated: Breath against breath warms my life.A thousand kisses give me I pray thee.Love says it all without number,love knows no law.
Pierre de Ronsard
If we go down into ourselves we find that we possess exactly what we desire.
Simone Weil
You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life.
Albert Camus
I do not believe, from what I have been told about this people, that there is anything barbarous or savage about them, except that we all call barbarous anything that is contrary to our own habits.
Michel de Montaigne
The peculiarity of sunrise is to make us laugh at all our terrors of the night, and our laugh is always proportioned to the fear we have had.
Victor Hugo
We don't receive wisdom we must discover it for ourselves.
Marcel Proust
Such then is the human condition, that to wish greatness for one's country is to wish harm to one's neighbors.
Voltaire
Teach the ignorant as much as you can; society is culpable in not providing a free education for all and it must answer for the night which it produces. If the soul is left in darkness sins will be committed. The guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but he who causes the darkness.
Victor Hugo
The worst time is always the present.
Jean de La Fontaine
Is it surprising that the cellular prison, with its regular chronologies, forced labour, its authorities of surveillance and registration, its experts in normality, who continue and multiply the functions of the judge, should have become the modern instrument of penality? Is it surprising that prisons resemble factories, schools, barracks, hospitals, which all resemble prisons?
Michel Foucault
For my part, the more I went forward in the study of letters, and ever more easily, the greater became the ardour of my devotion to them, until in truth I was so enthralled by my passion for learning that, gladly leaving to my brothers the pomp of glory in arms, the right of heritage and all the honours that should have been mine as the eldest born, I fled utterly from the court of Mars that I might win learning in the bosom of Minerva. And -- since I found the armory of logical reasoning more to my liking than the other forms of philosophy, I exchanged all other weapons for these, and to the prizes of victory in war I preferred the battle of minds in disputation.
Pierre Abélard
Pains do not hold a marriage together. It is threads hundreds of tiny threads which sew people together through the years. That's what makes a marriage last - more than passion or even sex.
Simone Signoret
Is the selfishness of children really so different from our own? During the summer in the country we curse the rain, while the farmers are crying out for it.
Raymond Radiguet
Nothing is more natural than mutual misunderstanding; the contrary is always surprising. I believe that one never agrees on anything except by mistake, and that all harmony among human beings is the happy fruit of an error.
Paul Valéry
Certainly, they'd had to endure the war, but they had each other close by. They had never known the confusion of being a third-worlder, they had always a home!
Marjane Satrapi
The bed has become a place of luxury to me! I would not exchange it for all the thrones in the world.
Napoleon
Had she stabbed me with a knife, she could not have hurt me more.
Alexandre Dumas fils
Those who might be tempted to give way to despair should realize that nothing accomplished in this order can ever be lost, that confusion, error and darkness can win the day only apparently and in a purely ephemeral way, that all partial and transitory disequilibrium must perforce contribute towards the greater equilibrium of the whole, and that nothing can ultimately prevail against the power of truth.
René Guénon
To learn is not to know; there are the learners and the learned. Memory makes the one, philosophy the others.
Alexandre Dumas
In the letters section, a Scot reminds his readers of the ‘Glorious Alliance’ between France and Mary Queen of Scots, which explains why Scotland should not share the rabid Europhobia of Englishmen.
Bruno Latour
We promise according to our hopes and perform according to our fears.
François de La Rochefoucauld
Let me struggle like a woman- my strength lies in my weakness. - Milady
Alexandre Dumas
Once the writer in every individual comes to life (and that time is not far off), we are in for an age of universal deafness and lack of understanding.
Milan Kundera
Life leaps like a geyser for those who drill through the rock of inertia.
Dr. Alexis Carrel
Man arrives as a novice at each age of his life.
Sebastien Chamfort
True love grows by sacrifice and the more thoroughly the soul rejects natural satisfaction the stronger and more detached its tenderness becomes.
Therese of Lisieux
A mud-stained sunlight began to splatter the sodden fields, and the hateful, nasal world of birds began to come to life. It seemed to me that I was coming out of a suffocating nightmare and that the low clouds flying before the wind were the shreds of an evil dream.
Blaise Cendrars
Many people think that happiness comes from having more power or more money.
François Lelord
All things must be examined, debated, investigated without exception and without regard for anyone's feelings.
Denis Diderot
Laws change more slowly than custom, and though dangerous when they fall behind the times are more dangerous still when the presume to anticipate custom.
Marguerite Yourcenar
History is written by the winners.
Napoléon Bonaparte
It was easier for me to think of a world without a creator than of a creator burdened with all the contradictions in the world.
Simone de Beauvoir
There is a certain standard of grace and beauty which consists in a certain relation between our nature... and the thing which pleases us.
Blaise Pascal
Nothing is more like a wise man than a fool who holds his tongue.
St. Francis de Sales
Let us hope that the advent of a successful flying machine, now only dimly foreseen and nevertheless thought to be possible, will bring nothing but good into the world; that it shall abridge distance, make all parts of the globe accessible, bring men into closer relation with each other, advance civilization, and hasten the promised era in which there shall be nothing but peace and goodwill among all men.
Octave Chanute
Science increases our power in proportion as it lowers our pride.
Claude Bernard
Sorrow is allowed, sorrow is advised; all we have to do is let go, all we have to do is love.
Grégoire Delacourt
When it has finished saying it, it no longer is. The longer it is in saying it, the more it can say it at length, the more slowly it melts, the better quality it is.
Francis Ponge
The mind, placed before any kind of difficulty, can find an ideal outlet in the absurd. Accommodation to the absurd readmits adults to the mysterious realm inhabited by children.
André Breton
Behind every successful man stands a surprised mother-in-law.
Voltaire
I never truly believed that human business was some serious thing.
Albert Camus
The greatest achievement of the human spirit is to live up to one's opportunities and make the most of one's resources.
Vauvenargues
Is there anyone so wise as to learn by the experience of others?
Voltaire
Nothing is good for everyone but only relatively to some people.
André Gide
Chabrias, ever preoccupied to offer the gods the worship due them, was disturbed by the progress of sects of this kind among the populace of large cities; he feared for the welfare of our ancient religions, which yoke men to no dogma whatsoever, but lend themselves, on the contrary, to interpretations as varied as nature itself; they allow austere spirits who desire to do so to invent for themselves a higher morality, but they do not bind the masses to precepts so strict as to engender immediate constraint and hypocrisy.
Marguerite Yourcenar
Great friendship is never without anxiety.
Marie de Rabutin-Chantal
The salvation of all the elect is not less certain than the power of God is invincible.
John Calvin
One can hear all that's going on in the street. Which means that from the street one can hear what's going on in this house.
Jean Genet
What is love? two souls and one flesh friendship? two bodies and one soul.
Joseph Roux
He was a young man of savage & unexpected originality, a diseased genius & quite frankly, a mad genius. Imbeciles grow insane & in their insanity the imbecility remains stagnant or agitated; in the madness of a man of genius some genius often remains: the form & not the quality of intelligence has been affected; the fruit has been bruised in the fall, but has preserved all its perfume & all the savor of its pulp, hardly too ripe.
Rémy de Gourmont
To conquer without risk is to triumph without glory.
Pierre Corneille
Servitude debases men to the point where they end up liking it.
Vauvenargues
People are unlearning certain things, and they do well, provided that, while unlearning them they learn this: There is no vacuum in the human heart. Certain demolitions take place, and it is well that they do, but on condition that they are followed by reconstructions.
Victor Hugo
The world outside had its own rules, and those rules were not human.
Michel Houellebecq
Thirsty for being, the poet ceaselessly reaches out to reality, seeking with the indefatigable harpoon of the poem a reality that is always better hidden, more re(g)al. The poem’s power is as an instrument of possession but at the same time, ineffably, it expresses the desire for possession, like a net that fishes by itself, a hook that is also the desire of the fish. To be a poet is to desire and, at the same time, to obtain, in the exact shape of the desire.
Julio Cortázar
The pure playfulness of certain wholly whimsical portions of (Charles) Cros’s work should not obscure the fact that at the center of some of his most beautiful poems a revolver is leveled straight at us.
André Breton