Quotes by French Authors - Page 139

The leave zipped right by. We were so terrifically glad to be back to our own little section of the trench, with all its happy memories, that we wouldn’t have traded places with anybody. The lazy bastard who’d filled in while we were away hadn’t managed to nibble away so much as an inch of garden soil in the direction of Berlin.We found out that Brugnon hadn’t come back from leave. He’d hanged himself in the stairwell of his building, on rue des Gâtines. He left a note to say he couldn’t take it any more and asked us to count him out. We accepted it… Who were we to judge?
Jacques Tardi
But just a vibration among the trees and stones, on the paths. Walking to breathe in the landscape. Every step an inspiration born to die immediately, well beyond the oeuvre. I like to walk at my ease, and to stop when I like. A wandering life is what I want. To walk through a beautiful country in fine weather, without being obliged to hurry, and with a pleasant prospect at the end, is of all kinds of life the one most suited to my taste.
Frédéric Gros
Of course, Kafka doesn't see himself as a sort of party. He doesn't even pretend to be revolutionary, whatever his socialist sympathies may be. He knows that all the lines link him to a literary machine of expression for which he is simultaneously the gears, the mechanic, the operator, and the victim. So how will he proceed in this bachelor machine that doesn't make use of, and can't make use of, social critique? How will he make a revolution?He will act on the German language such as it is in Czechoslovakia. Since it is a deterritorialized language in many ways, he will push the deterritorialization farther, not through intensities, reversals and thickenings of the language but through a sobriety that makes language take flight on a straight line, anticipates or produces its segmentations. Expression must sweep up content; the same process must happen to form... It is not a politics of pessimism, nor a literary caricature or a form of science fiction.
Giles Deleuze
Have you really not noticed, then, that here of all places, in this private, personal solitude that surrounds me, I have turned to you? All the memories of my youth speak to me as I walk, just as the sea shells crunch under my feet on the beach. The crash of every wave awakens far-distant reverberations within me... I hear the rumble of bygone days, and in my mind the whole endless series of old passions surges forward like the billows. I remember my spasms, my sorrows, gusts of desire that whistled like wind in the rigging, and vast vague longings that swirled in the dark like a flock of wild gulls in a stormcloud... On whom should I lean, if not on you? My weary mind turns for refreshment to the thought of you as a dusty traveler might sink onto a soft and grassy bank...
Gustave Flaubert
[W]hen someone finds himself quite unjustly attacked and hated on all sides, there is no need for such a person to feel dismayed by misfortune. See how Fortune, who has harmed many a one, is so inconstant, for God, Who opposes all wrong deeds, raises up those in whom hope dwells.
Christine de Pizan
Reality is myself, reality is only the perception of this instant and it can't be related to another person.
Gao Xingjian
mankind have a little corrupted nature, for they were not born wolves, and they have become wolves; God has given them neither cannon of four-and-twenty pounders, nor bayonets; and yet they have made cannon and bayonets to destroy one another.
Voltaire
Hast thou found out, Voltaire, that it is bliss to die, And does thy hideous smile over thy bleached bones fly?
Alfred de Musset
Blessed be you, mighty matter, irresistible march of evolution, reality ever newborn; you who, by constantly shattering our mental categories, force us to go ever further and further in our pursuit of the truth.
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
I am concerned with facts of quite unverifiable intrinsic value, but which, by their absolutely unexpected violently fortuitous character, and the kind of associations of suspect ideas they provoke.
André Breton
The first step in liquidating a people,' said Hubl, 'is to erase its memory. Destroy its books, its culture, its history. Then have somebody write new books, manufacture a new culture, invent a new history. Before long the nation will begin to forget what it is and what it was. The world around it will forget even faster.
Milan Kundera
The being that I shall be after death has no more reason to remember the man I have been since my birth than the latter to remember what I was before it.
Marcel Proust
You have to be very fond of men. Very, very fond. You have to be very fond of them to love them. Otherwise they're simply unbearable.
Marguerite Duras
This is wisdom: to love wine beauty and the heavenly spring. That's sufficient-the rest is worthless.
Theodore De Banville
Ingratitude is the soul's enemy... Ingratitude is a burning wind that dries up the source of love, the dew of mercy, the streams of grace.
Bernard of Clairvoux
There is no more dreadful punishment than futile and hopeless labor.
Albert Camus
In my opinion the main evil of the present democratic institutions of the United States does not arise, as is often asserted in Europe, from their weakness, but from their overpowering strength; and I am not so much alarmed at the excessive liberty which reigns in that country as at the very inadequate securities which exist against tyranny.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.
Voltaire
Twas easier to disarm the god of strengthThan this Hippolytus, for HerculesYielded so often to the eyes of beauty,As to make triumph cheap.― Jean Racine, Phèdre
Jean Racine
Hatred becomes, within a given time, the hatred of society, then the hatred of the human race, then the hatred of creation.
Victor Hugo
... even in his most artificial creations, nature is the material upon which man has to work; certain spots will persist in remaining surrounded by the vassals of their own special sovereignty, and will raise their immemorial standards among all the 'laid-out' scenery of a park, just as they would have done far from any human interference, in a solitude which must everywhere return to engulf them, springing up out of the necessities of their exposed position, and superimposing itself upon the work of man's hands.
Marcel Proust
It was an accident that has endowed man with intelligence. He has made use of it: he invented stupidity.
Rémy de Gourmont
People do not read stupidities with impunity.
Victor Hugo
I worship impersonal Nature, which is neither "good" or "bad", and who knows neither love nor hatred. I worship Life; the Sun, Sustainer of life. I believe in the Law of everlasting struggle, which is the law of life, and in the duty of the best specimens of our race — the natural élite of mankind — to rule the earth, and evolve out of themselves a caste of supermen, a people 'like unto the Gods'.
Savitri Devi
Once again was it proved that the designs of Providence are impenetrable and that the sinner, climbing out of the pit of his filthiness, may feel himself touched by grace.
Gabriel Chevallier
The love we have for our native land would be good and praiseworthy if it did not degenerate, as we see it does everywhere, into vanity, the spirit of predominance, acquisitiveness, hate, envy, nationalism, and militarism
Henri Barbusse
Humility consists in not esteeming ourselves above other men, and in not seeking to be esteemed above them.
Francis de Sales
The idea so commonly found that scepticism leads to toleration arises from considering the effects of scepticism in the intellectual who takes no active part - not its effects in the man of action. In the man of action, moral relativism and scepticism as to the absolute and universal value of his priunciples are no obstacle to a fanatical belief in their immediate value as his own clan at the actual moment; they do not weaken in the least his will to impose his principles. How should he glimpse a soul of truth in the principles of others, entitling them to respect, when he does not believe in noble origins of this kind even for his own principles?
Bertrand De Jouvenel
Isn’t ‘not to be bored’ one of the principal goals of life?
Gustave Flaubert
Success causes us to be more praised than known.
Joseph Roux
The past which is so presumptuously brought forward as a precedent for the present was itself founded on some past that went before it.
Madame de Stael
It is not my words that I polish, but my ideas. 102
Joseph Joubert
The only things that distinguish us from the rest of the animals Madam is our habit of drinking when we are not thirsty and making love at any time.
Pierre Beaumarchais
This formidable officine dates from Peter the Great, who formed it in 1697...its historic origins must, however, be looked for much earlier; one finds them in the byzantine traditions and in the operations of the Tartar domination...espionage, delation, torture, and secret executions were the normal and regulating instruments of the |||||||| police.
Maurice Paléologue
To ridicule philosophy is really to philosophize.
Blaise Pascal
While paying attention to positive and negative feedback is very important, it is not enough. What also matters is acknowledging and responding to this feedback. This is how you nurture your relationship with your audience.
Cendrine Marrouat
And like an aviator who rolls painfully along the ground until, abruptly, he breaks away from it, I felt myself being slowly lifted towards the silent peaks of memory.
Marcel Proust
At that time, I often thought that if I had had to live in the trunk of a dead tree, with nothing to do but look up at the sky flowing overhead, little by little I would have gotten used to it.
Albert Camus
At thirty a man should know himself like the palm of his hand know the exact number of his defects and qualities. ... And above all accept these things.
Albert Camus
Sadness is a state of sin.
André Gide
Man, I can assure you, is a nasty creature.
Molière
To be born to create, to love, to win at games is to be born to live in time of peace. But war teaches us to lose everything and become what we were not. It all becomes a question of style.
Albert Camus
I am no longer what I was. I will remain what I have become.
Coco Chanel
What can be more absurd than choosing to carry a burden that one really wants to throw to the ground? To detest, and yet to strive to preserve our existence? To caress the serpent that devours us and hug him close to our bosoms tillhe has gnawed into our hearts?
Voltaire
Contrariety triumphed in the great hullaballoo of the end of the world!
Catulle Mendès
To love or have loved, that is enough. Ask nothing further, There is no other pearl to be found in the dark folds of life.
Victor Hugo
I carry my adornments on my soul.I do not dress up like a popinjay;But inwardly, I keep my daintiness.I do not bear with me, by any chance,An insult not yet washed away- a conscienceYellow with unpurged bile- an honor frayedTo rags, a set of scruples badly worn.I go caparisoned in gems unseen,Trailing white plumes of freedom, garlandedWith my good name- no figure of a man,But a soul clothed in shining armor, hungWith deeds for decorations, twirling- thus-A bristling wit, and swinging at my sideCourage, and on the stones of this old townMaking the sharp truth ring, like golden spurs!
Edmond Rostand
May night continue to fall upon the orchestra
André Breton
It sometimes happens that pleasure blows anywhere it damn well chooses.
Louis Aragón
When the same qualities which we admire in ourselves are seen in others, even though they be superior, maliciously lower and carp at them.
John Calvin
Science, my lad, has been built upon many errors; but they are errors which it was good to fall into, for they led to the truth.
Jules Verne
In books there are chapters to separate out the moments, to show that time is going by and things are changing, and sometimes the parts even have titles that are full of promise—'The Meeting', 'Hope', 'Downfall'—like paintings do. But in life there's nothing like that, no titles or signs or warnings, nothing to say 'Beware, danger!' or 'Frequent landslides' or 'Disillusion ahead'. In life you stand all alone in your costume, and too bad if it's in tatters.
Delphine de Vigan
A pessimist is a man who tells the truth prematurely.
Cyrano de Bergerac
Your heart is the correspondent of your soul. It knows the grooves of joy.
Karen Ruimy
In a sense, I am a moralist, insofar as I believe that one of the tasks, one of the meanings of human existence—the source of human freedom—is never to accept anything as definitive, untouchable, obvious, or immobile. No aspect of reality should be allowed to become a definitive and inhuman law for us. We have to rise up against all forms of power—but not just power in the narrow sense of the word, referring to the power of a government or of one social group over another: these are only a few particular instances of power. Power is anything that tends to render immobile and untouchable those things that are offered to us as real, as true, as good
Michel Foucault
... the objects which we admire have no absolute value in themselves...
Marcel Proust
Happiness is in the taste and not in the things themselves we are happy from possessing what we like not from possessing what others like.
François de La Rochefoucauld
Nowadays what isn't worth saying is
Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais
He replies nothing but monosyllables. I believe he would make three bites of a cherry.
François Rabelais
What right does my present have to speak of my past? Has my present some advantage over my past? What "grace" might have enlightened me? except that of passing time, or of a good cause, encountered on my way?
Roland Barthes