Quotes by French Authors - Page 32

Against eternal injustice, man must assert justice, and to protest against the universe of grief, he must create happiness.
Albert Camus
... rejoicing in a peace which brings only an increase of anxiety,...
Marcel Proust
The infinite distance between the mind & the body is a symbol of the distance that is infinitely more, between the intellect & love, for love is divine.
Blaise Pascal
I like the posture, but not the yoga. I like the inebriated morning, but not the opium. I like the flower but not the garden, the moment but not the dream. Quiet, my love. Be still. I am sleeping.
Roman Payne
The incapacity to name is a good symptom of disturbance.
Roland Barthes
Woman is sacred the woman one loves is holy.
Alexandre Dumas
Perfection does not exist. To understand this is the triumph of human intelligence to expect to possess it is the most dangerous kind of madness.
Alfred de Musset
You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed.
Antoine De Saint Exupery
Among all the occurrences possible in the universe the a priori probability of any particular one of them verges upon zero. Yet the universe exists; particular events must take place in it, the probability of which (before the event) was infinitesimal. At the present time we have no legitimate grounds for either asserting or denying that life got off to but a single start on earth, and that, as a consequence, before it appeared its chances of occurring were next to nil. ... Destiny is written concurrently with the event, not prior to it... The universe was not pregnant with life nor the biosphere with man. Our number came up in the Monte Carlo game. Is it surprising that, like the person who has just made a million at the casino, we should feel strange and a little unreal?
Jacques Monod
The value of life lies not in the length of days but in the use we make of them a man may live long yet live very little.
Michel de Montaigne
I'll never waste my dreams by falling asleep. Never again.
Eugène Ionesco
Yes, but I say that Nature is our enemy, that we must always fight against Nature, for she is continually bringing us back to an animal state. You may be sure that God has not put anything on this earth that is clean, pretty, elegant or accessory to our ideal; the human brain has done it.
Guy de Maupassant
Man has reached the moon, but twenty centuries ago a poet knew the enchantments that would make the moon come down to earth.
Julio Cortázar
What good does it do me, after all, if an ever-watchful authority keeps an eye out to ensure that my pleasures will be tranquil and races ahead of me to ward off all danger, sparing me the need even to think about such things, if that authority, even as it removes the smallest thorns from my path, is also absolute master of my liberty and my life; if it monopolizes vitality and existence to such a degree that when it languishes, everything around it must also languish; when it sleeps, everything must also sleep; and when it dies, everything must also perish?
Alexis de Tocqueville
Healthy people have a natural skill of avoiding feverish eyes.
Albert Camus
Every man who begets a free act projects his personality into the infinite. If he gives a poor man a penny grudgingly, that penny pierces the poor man’s hand, falls, pierces the earth, bores holes in suns, crosses the firmament and compromises the universe. If he begets an impure act, he perhaps darkens thousands of hearts whom he does not know, who are mysteriously linked to him, and who need this man to be pure as a traveller dying of thirst needs the Gospel’s draught of water. A charitable act, an impulse of real pity sings for him the divine praises, from the time of Adam to the end of the ages; it cures the sick, consoles those in despair, calms storms, ransoms prisoners, converts the infidel and protects mankind
Léon Bloy
Man is immortal, his salvation is hereafter, The state has no immortality, its salvation is now or never
Cardinal Richelieu
The question isn't whether I have time to read or not (time that nobody will ever give me, by the way), but whether I'll allow myself the pleasure of being a reader.
Daniel Pennac
Just when the gods had ceased to be, and the Christ had not yet come, there was a unique moment in history, between Cicero and Marcus Aurelius, when man stood alone.
Gustave Flaubert
A good sentence in prose should be like a good line in poetry, unchangeable, as rhythmic, as sonorous.
Gustave Flaubert
Reason, you'll always be half-blind.
Marguerite Porete
And in myself, too, many things have perished which, I imagined, would last for ever, and new structures have arisen, giving birth to new sorrows and new joys which in those days I could not have foreseen, just as now the old are difficult of comprehension.
Marcel Proust
To love a book is, above all, to love its author: we want to meet him again, we want to spend our days with him.
Michel Houellebecq
As incompetent in life as in death, I loathe myself and in this loathing I dream of another life, another death. And for having sought to be a sage such as never was, I am only a madman among the mad . . .
Emil M. Cioran
I don't have to worry about Madame Ouche! she'll still be robbing me blind when she's dead!...having made her last confession and received extreme unction...all the cataclysms will pass over her without harming a single gray hair on her head! it's a paradise here for scum like her, on earth as there is in heaven...they don't really die, the sluts, the hussies, the really awful ones, they just go from one paradise to another, with their money, servants, cars...just buy their cute little ticket and off they go! final absolution and see you later! they shit in your hands!...they're born to slip out of both hells - the one here and the one in the next world...all they do is fuck and whine...loads of cash! never broke!...cheers! here's to you! no regrets! you realize too late...
Louis-Ferdinand Céline
The most empowering relationships are those in which each partner lifts the other to a higher possession of their own being.
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
8 April 1891The obscenity of nostrils and mouths; the ignominious cupidity of smiles and women encountered in the street; the shifty baseness on every side, as of hyenas and wild beasts ready to bite: tradesmen in their shops and strollers on their pavements. How long must I suffer this? I have suffered it before, as a child, when, descending by chance to the servant's quarters, I overheard in astonishment their vile gossip, tearing up my own kind with their lovely teeth.This hostility to the entire race, this muted detestation of lynxes in human form, I must have rediscovered it later while at school. I had a repugnance and horror for all base instincts, but am I not myself instinctively violent and lewd, murderous and sensual? Am I any different, in essence, from the members of the riotous and murderous mob of a hundred years ago, who hurled the town sergeants into the Seine and cried, 'String up the aristos!' just as they shout 'Down with the army!' or 'Death to the Jews!
Jean Lorrain
But what are a hundred million deaths? When one has served in a war, one hardly knows what a dead man is, after a while. And since a dead man has no substance unless one has actually seen him dead, a hundred million corpses broadcast through history are no more than a puff of smoke in the imagination.
Albert Camus
Oh, the fools, like a lot of good little schoolboys, scared to death of anything they've been taught is wrong!
Émile Zola
Yet, whether to the glory or to the shame of human nature, in what we call pleasure (with an excess of scorn, perhaps) there are abysses as deep as those of love.
Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly
When we're afraid, we lose all sense of analysis and reflection. Our fear paralyzes us. Besides, fear has always been the driving force behind all dictators' repression.
Marjane Satrapi
What is irritating about love is that it is a crime that requires an accomplice.
Charles Baudelaire
I reserve the right to love many different people at once, and to change my prince often.
Anaïs Nin
Alas! I thought I had only a friendship for you, but the grief I now feel convinces me, that I cannot live without you.
Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont
It is now clear that faith is a singular pledge of paternal love, treasured up for the sons whom he has adopted.
John Calvin
My fame will outshine that of Victor Hugo or Napoleon.
Raymond Roussel
So it came to this, that— against the grain, no doubt—the condemned man had to hope the apparatus was in good working order! This, I thought, was a flaw in the system; and, on the face of it, my view was sound enough. On the other hand, I had to admit it proved the efficiency of the system. It came to this; the man under sentence was obliged to collaborate mentally, it was in his interest that all should go off without a hitch.
Albert Camus
Symptoms then are in reality nothing but the cry from suffering organs.
Jean-Martin Charcot
I finally understood what my grandmother meant. If I wasn't comfortable with myself, I would never be comfortable.
Marjane Satrapi
Genuflection before the idol or the dollar destroys the muscles which walk and the will that moves.
Victor Hugo
He dreamed of funeral love, but dreams crumble and the tomb abides
Gustave Flaubert
Trees that are slow to grow bear the best fruit.
Molière
There are people who have money and people who are rich.
Coco Chanel
I always say to myself what is the most important thing we can think about at this extraordinary moment.
François de La Rochefoucauld
...those who deny or oppose these so pleasant delights (of virtue), do so only from jealousy, you may be sure, from the barbarous pleasure of making others as guilty and unhappy as they are. They are blind and would like everyone to be the same, they are mistaken, and would like everyone else to be mistaken; but if you could see into the depths of their hearts you would find only sorrow and repentance; all these apostles of crime are only evil and desperate people; you would not find a sincere person among them who would not admit, if he were truthful, that their poisonous words or dangerous writings had not been guided only by their passions. And what man in fact can say in cold blood that the bases of morality can be shaken without risk? What being would dare maintain that doing good and desiring good are not essentially the aim of mankind? And how can a man who will do only evil expect to be happy in a society whose strongest concern is the perpetual increase of good? But will not this apologist of crime not shudder himself when he had uprooted from all hearts the only thing which could lead to his conversion? What will stop his servants ruining him, if they have ceased to be virtuous?
Marquis de Sade
Society is composed of two great classes-- those who have more dinners than appetite, and those who have more appetite than dinners.
Sebastien Chamfort
I am fifty years old and I have always lived in freedom; let me end my life free; when I am dead let this be said of me: 'He belonged to no school, to no church, to no institution, to no academy, least of all to any régime except the régime of liberty.
Gustave Courbet
Besides the pleasure, there is always remorse, from the indulgence of our passions; and, after all, what have you men to fear from all this; the world excuses, and notoriety ennobles you?
Alexandre Dumas
Dull minds are never either intuitive or mathematical.
Blaise Pascal
The more one judges, the less one loves.
Honoré de Balzac
Convince yourself that you are working in clay, not marble, on paper not eternal bronze: Let that first sentence be as stupid as it wishes.
Jacques Barzun
I like to say, but saying is too much." We understand not the same.
Gilbert Alexandre
Sovereignty, loyalty, and solitude.
Georges Bataille
We communed together a moment, one with the other—I was deeply fascinated. At our first encounter I am sure I had a nebulous presentiment that I would one day go to it in spite of my hesitation, in spite of all the efforts put forth to hold me back,—and the emotion that overwhelmed me in the presence of the sea was not only one of fear, but I felt also an inexpressible sadness, and I seemed to feel the anguish of desolation, bereavement and exile. With downcast mien, and with hair blown about by the wind, I turned and ran home. I was in the extreme haste to be with my mother; I wished to embrace her and to cling close to her; I desired to be with her so that she might console me for the thousand indefinite, anticipated sorrows that surged through my heart at the sight of those green waters, so vast and so deep.
Pierre Loti
Man is fully responsible for his nature, choices and lifestyle.
Jean-Paul Sartre
Of course, you'll defend Jay," says Rango, He was a part of your former life, of your former values. I will never be able to alter that. I want you to think as I do.""But Rango, you couldn't respect someone who surrendered an opinion merely to please you . It would be hypocrisy.
Anaïs Nin
But memory is less disposed to compromise
Albert Camus
The body is a clothing that suits us for life. (Le corps est un habit - Qui nous va à vie.)
Charles de Leusse
All human wisdom is summed up in two words: wait and hope.
Alexandre Dumas
Boredom was at the root of Lazare's unhappiness, an oppressive, unremitting boredom, exuding from everything like the muddy water of a poisoned spring. He was bored with leisure, with work, with himself even more than with others. Meanwhile he blamed his own idleness for it, he ended by being ashamed of it.
Émile Zola