Quotes by French Authors - Page 91

It is a great misfortune neither to have enough wit to talk well nor enough judgement to be silent.
Jean de La Bruyère
we said we would be to each other as two voices, who shadows.
Alexandre Dumas
Don’t be afraid anymore. Not of anyone. Not of anything. Nothing. Ever again. Listen to me: not ever again.
Marguerite Duras
Dantes had entered the Chateau d’If with the round, open, smiling face of a young and happy man, with whom the earlypaths of life have been smooth. and who anticipates a future corresponding with his past. This was now all changed. The oval face was lengthened, his smiling mouth had assumed the firm and markedlines which betoken resolution; his eyebrows were arched beneath a brow furrowed with thought; his eyes were full of melancholy, and from their depths occasionally sparkled gloomy fires of misanthropy and hatred; his complexion, so long kept from the sun, had now that pale color which produces, when the features are encircled with black hair, the aristocratic beauty of the man of the north; the profound learning he had acquired had besides diffused over his features a refined intellectual expression; and he had also acquired, being naturally of a goodly stature, that vigor which a frame possesses which has so long concentrated all its force within itself.
Alexandre Dumas
I am a solitary wave in the dark and desolate sea: and the sparkling glass I drank was drugged with misery.
Adelbert von Chamisso
Above all, trust in the slow work of God.We are quite naturally impatient in everything to reach the end without delay.We should like to skip the intermediate stages.We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new.And yet it is the law of all progress that it is made by passing through some stages of instability— and that it may take a very long time.And so I think it is with you; your ideas mature gradually—let them grow, let them shape themselves, without undue haste.Don’t try to force them on, as though you could be today what time (that is to say, grace and circumstances acting on your own good will) will make of you tomorrow.Only God could say what this new spirit gradually forming within you will be.Give Our Lord the benefit of believing that his hand is leading you,and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself in suspense and incomplete.
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
We do not content ourselves with the life we have in ourselves we desire to live an imaginary life in the minds of others and for this purpose we endeavor to shine.
Blaise Pascal
How could the human mind progress, while tormented with frightful phantoms, and guided by men, interested in perpetuating its ignorance and fears? Man has been forced to vegetate in his primitive stupidity: he has been taught stories about invisible powers upon whom his happiness was supposed to depend. Occupied solely by his fears, and by unintelligible reveries, he has always been at the mercy of priests, who have reserved to themselves the right of thinking for him, and of directing his actions.
Paul Henri Thiry d'Holbach
Language is a skin: I rub my language against the other. It is as if I had words instead of fingers, or fingers at the tip of my words. My language trembles with desire
Roland Barthes
Women are extraordinary creatures!
Roman Payne
From the point of view of wealth, there is no difference between need, comfort and pleasure
Michel Foucault
Before we set our hearts too much upon anything let us examine how happy they are who already possess it.
La Rochefoucauld
For he was aware of the great secret of life: Women don't look for handsome men. Women look for men who have had beautiful women. Having an ugly mistress is therefore a fatal mistake.
Milan Kundera
If we choose Jesus as our model, we simultaneously choose his own model, God the Father. Having no appropriative desire, Jesus proclaims the possibility of freedom from scandal. But if we choose possessive models we find ourselves in endless scandals, for our real model is Satan. A seductive tempter who suggests to us the desires most likely to generate rivalries, Satan prevents us from reaching whatever he simultaneously incites us to desire.
René Girard
What is man if the signs that predate him have such power? A human race has to invent sacrifices equal to the natural cataclysmic order that surrounds it.
Jean Baudrillard
It is wrong to become absorbed in the divine law to such a degree as not to perceive human law. Death belongs to God alone. By what right do men touch that unknown thing?
Victor Hugo
Throw your dreams into space like a kite, and you do not know what it will bring back, a new life, a new friend, a new love, a new country.
Anaïs Nin
Oh! if the good hearts had the fat purses, how much better everything would go!
Victor Hugo
The fear of death never left me; I couldn't get used to the thought; I would still sometimes shake and weep with terror. By contrast, the fact of existence here and now sometimes took on a glorious splendour.
Simone de Beauvoir
Remember BarbaraIt rained all day on Brest that dayAnd you walked smilingFlushed enraptured streaming-wetIn the rainRemember BarbaraIt rained all day on Brest that dayAnd I ran into you in Siam StreetYou were smilingAnd I smiled tooRemember BarbaraYou whom I didn't knowYou who didn't know meRememberRemember that day stillDon't forgetA man was taking cover on a porchAnd he cried your nameBarbaraAnd you ran to him in the rainStreaming-wet enraptured flushedAnd you threw yourself in his armsRemember that BarbaraAnd don't be mad if I speak familiarlyI speak familiarly to everyone I loveEven if I've seen them only onceI speak familiarly to all who are in loveEven if I don't know themRemember BarbaraDon't forgetThat good and happy rainOn your happy faceOn that happy townThat rain upon the seaUpon the arsenalUpon the Ushant boatOh BarbaraWhat shitstupidity the warNow what's become of youUnder this iron rainOf fire and steel and bloodAnd he who held you in his armsAmorouslyIs he dead and gone or still so much aliveOh BarbaraIt's rained all day on Brest todayAs it was raining beforeBut it isn't the same anymoreAnd everything is wreckedIt's a rain of mourning terrible and desolateNor is it still a stormOf iron and steel and bloodBut simply cloudsThat die like dogsDogs that disappearIn the downpour drowning BrestAnd float away to rotA long way offA long long way from BrestOf which there's nothing left.
Jacques Prévert
Happiness is a masterpiece: the slightest error compromises it, the slightest hesitation undermines it, the slightest excess corrupts it, the slightest vulgarity defiles it.
Marguerite Yourcenar
I prefer the company of books. When I'm reading, I'm never alone, I have a conversation with the book. It can be very intimate. Perhaps you know this feeling yourself? The sense that you're having an intellectual exchange with the author, following his or her train thought and you accompany each other for weeks on end.
Sophie Divry
We are intelligent beings: intelligent beings cannot have been formed by a crude, blind, insensible being: there is certainly some difference between the ideas of Newton and the dung of a mule. Newton's intelligence, therefore, came from another intelligence
Voltaire
Our minds are lazier than our bodies.
La Rochefoucauld
A man should be resigned to knowing himself a little better each day if he hasn't got the guts to put an end to his sniveling once and for all.
Louis-Ferdinand Céline
...he said firmly, "God can help you. All the men I’ve seen in your position turned to Him in their time of trouble." "Obviously," I replied, "they were at liberty to do so, if they felt like it." I, however, didn’t want to be helped, and I hadn’t time to work up interest for something that didn’t interest me.
Albert Camus
Glory is the sunshine of the dead
Honoré de Balzac
But if it be true, as every prospect assures us, that the human race shall not again relapse into its ancient barbarity; if every thing ought to assure us against that pusillanimous and corrupt system which condemns man to eternal oscillations between truth and falsehood, liberty and servitude, we must, at the same time, perceive that the light of information is spread over a small part only of our globe; and the number of those who possess real instruction, seems to vanish in the comparison with the mass of men consigned over to ignorance and prejudice. We behold vast countries groaning under slavery, and presenting nations in one place, degraded by the vices of civilization, so corrupt as to impede the progress of man; and in others, still vegetating in the infancy of its early age. We perceive that the exertions of these last ages have done much for the progress of the human mind, but little for the perfection of the human species; much for the glory of man, somewhat for his liberty, but scarcely any thing yet for his happiness. In a few directions, our eyes are struck with a dazzling light; but thick darkness still covers an immense horison.
Nicolas de Condorcet
In business, sir, one has no friends, only correspondents.
Alexandre Dumas
Nature is a word, an allegory, a mold, an embossing, if you will.
Charles Baudelaire
There is no passion so much transports the sincerity of judgement as doth anger.
Michel de Montaigne
One plays at being immortal and after a few weeks one doesn't even know whether or not one can hang on till the next day.
Albert Camus
You have told me, O God, to believe in hell. But you have forbidden me to think...of any man as damned
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
Tell me who loves, who admires you, and I will tell you who you are.
Charles-Augustin Sainte-Beuve
When he spoke, his words came with a confusion which was delightful to hear because one felt that it indicated not so much a defect in his speech as a quality of his soul, as it were a survival from the age of innocence which he had never wholly outgrown.
Marcel Proust
I was so much in the habit of having Albertine with me, and now I suddenly saw a new aspect of Habit. Hitherto I had regarded it chiefly as an annihilating force which suppresses the originality and even the awareness of one's perceptions; now I saw it as a dread deity, so riveted to one's being, its insignificant face so incrusted in one's heart, that if it detaches itself, if it turns away from one, this deity that one had barely distinguished inflicts on one sufferings more terrible than any other and is then as cruel as death itself.
Marcel Proust
It would never have crossed her mind spontaneously that somebody might actually need silence. That silence helps you to go inward, that anyone who is interested in something more than just life outside actually needs silence: this, I think, is not something Colombe is capable of understanding, because her inner space is as chaotic and noisy as the street outside.
Muriel Barbery
It [speaking with words that bring about harmony] consists of speaking of what is good about people, instead of what is wrong with them. For some people this is an almost impossible exercise, for they have become totally habituated to speaking critically. We all seem to have a special talent for finding critical things to say about the world, about others, and about ourselves! (117)
Jean-Yves Leloup
If it is the dirty element that gives pleasure to the act of lust, then the dirtier it is, the more pleasurable it is bound to be.
Marquis de Sade
-Would you wish us to invest it for you?-No, I would like you to set up a trust for dumb animals.-What kind of dumb animals do you have in mind, Miss Donahue?-Oh, stray dogs. Rats. Birds.-We could still invest it for you. Then the animals would get the income without touching the capital.-No, I don't wish to invest it. I don't want them to get rich. They might become human.
Romain Gary
Good night! Good night!Far flies the light;But still God's loveShall shine above,Making all bright,Good night! Good night!
Victor Hugo
Examine your heart often to see if it is such toward your neighbor as you would like his to be toward you were you in his place. This is the touchstone of true reason.
Francis de Sales
Il n'y a de réalité que dans l'action.(There is no reality except in action.)
Jean-Paul Sartre
... it was with an unusual intensity of pleasure, a pleasure destined to have a lasting effect upon his character and conduct...
Marcel Proust
To survive the Canadian winter, one needs a body of brass, eyes of glass, and blood made of brandy.
Louis Armand de Lom d'Arce Lahontan
If we go back to the beginning we shall find that ignorance and fear created the gods; that fancy, enthusiasm, or deceit adorned or disfigured them; that weakness worships them; that credulity preserves them, and that custom, respect and tyranny support them in order to make the blindness of man serve its own interests.
Baron D. Holbach
So the little prince tamed the fox. And when the time for him to leave was approaching:"Oh!", said the fox. "I am going to cry.""It's your own fault," said the little prince. "I never wished you any harm; but you wanted me to tame you...""I know," said the fox."And now you're going to cry!" said the little prince."I know," said the fox."So you have gained nothing from it at all!""Yes, I have gained something," said the fox, "because of the colour of the corn.
Antoine De Saint Exupery
The fox is answering the Little Prince's question. What does that mean . . . tame? asks the Little Prince. Itmeans to establish ties. One only understands the things that one tames. Men have no more time to understand anything, they buy things all ready made at the shops, but there is no shop anywhere one can buy friendship.
Antoine De Saint Exupery
whether they knew of didn't know is not the main issue; the main issue is whether a man is innocent because he didn't know. (...) by beating himself on the chest and proclaiming, "My conscience is clear! I did not know! I was a believer!" Isn't his "I did not know I was a believer!" at the very root of his irreparable guilt?
Milan Kundera
The dead know everything but they don't give a damn.
Joanne Harris
They find me odd, and whisper behind hands…And my brutal desires sink hooks into their lips…
Arthur Rimbaud
Purgatory surpasses heaven and hell in poetry, because it represents a future and the others do not.
Francois Rene De Chateaubriand
Man is always prey to his truths. Once he has admitted them, he cannot free himself from them.
Albert Camus
The lazy are always wanting to do something.
Vauvenargues
We know something about billionaire consumption, but it is hard to measure some of it. Some billionaires are consuming politicians, others consume reporters, and some consume academics...
Thomas Piketty
Something more terrible than a hell where one suffers may be imagined, and that is a hell where one is bored.
Victor Hugo
A wise man is superior to any insults which can be put upon him, and the best reply to unseemly behavior is patience and moderation.
Molière
It is a mistake to speak of a bad choice in love, since as soon as there is a choice it can only be a bad one.
Marcel Proust
The public! the public! How many fools does it take to make up a public?
Sebastien Chamfort
May I love Him whom to love is to live indeed.
William of Saint-Thierry