Anatole France Quotes

A dictionary is merely the universe arranged in alphabetical order.

Custom alone regulates morals.

Change is the essence of life.

If the path be beautiful, let us not ask where it leads.

Silence is the wit of fools.

Ugly women may be naturally quite as capricious as pretty ones; but as they are never petted and spoiled, and as no allowances are made for them, they soon find themselves obliged either to suppress their whims or to hide them.

I ought not to fear to survive my own people so long as there are men in the world; for there are always some whom one can love.

In every well-governed state wealth is a sacred thing; in democracies it is the only sacred thing.

All the good writers of confessions, from Augustine onwards, are men who are still a little in love with their sins.

A writer is rarely so well inspired as when he talks about himself.

Chance is perhaps the pseudonym of God when he did not want to sign.

Without the Utopians of other times, men would still live in caves, miserable and naked. It was Utopians who traced the lines of the first City.....Out of generous dreams come beneficial realities. Utopia is the principle of all progress, and the essay into a better future.

Nine tenths of education is encouragement.

War will disappear only when men shall take no part whatever in violence and shall be ready to suffer every persecution that their abstention will bring them. It is the only way to abolish war.

People who don't count won't count.

For a man’s life would become intolerable, if he knew what was going to happen to him. He would be made aware of future evils, and would suffer their agonies in advance, while he would get no joy of present blessings since he would know how they would end. Ignorance is the necessary condition of human happiness, and it has to be admitted that on the whole mankind observes that condition well. We are almost entirely ignorant of ourselves; absolutely of others. In ignorance, we find our bliss; in illusions, our happiness.

A woman without breasts is like a bed without pillows.

Awaken people's curiosity. It is enough to open minds, do not overload them. Put there just a spark.

The books that everybody admires are those that nobody reads.

All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another.

God forbids suicide, and is unwilling that his creatures should destroy themselves.

Man is so made that he can only find relaxation from one kind of labor by taking up another.

People who have no weaknesses are terrible; there is no way of taking advantage of them.

One thing above all gives charm to men's thoughts, and this is unrest. A mind that is not uneasy irritates and bores me.

We chase dreams and embrace shadows.

Existence would be intolerable if we were never to dream.

There are very honest people who do not think that they have had a bargain unless they have cheated a merchant.

It is better to understand little than to misunderstand a lot.

Yet, every now and then, there would pass a young girl, slender, fair and desirable, arousing in young men a not ignoble desire to possess her, and stirring in old men regrets for ecstasy not seized and now forever past.

That child whose mother has never smiled upon him is worthy neither of the table of the gods nor the couch of the goddesses.

Irony is the gaiety of reflection and the joy of wisdom.

Suffering... We owe to it all that is good in us, all that gives value to life; we owe to it pity, we owe to it courage, we owe to it all the virtues.

The dog is a religious animal. In his savage state he worships the moon and the lights that float upon the waters. These are his gods to whom he appeals at night with long-drawn howls.

History books that contain no lies are extremely dull.

Dog! When we first met on the highway of life, we came from the two poles of creation.... What can be the meaning of the obscure love for me that has sprung up in your heart?

It is not easy to be a pretty woman without causing mischief.

It is not customary to love what one has.

Never lend books, for no one ever returns them; the only books I have in my library are books that other folks have left me.

Devout believers are safeguarded in a high degree against the risk of certain neurotic illnesses; their acceptance of the universal neurosis spares them the task of constructing a personal one.

There are no bad books any more than there are ugly women.

The faculty of doubting is rare among men. A few choice spirits carry the germs of it in them, but these do not develop without training.

The heart errs like the head; its errors are not any the less fatal, and we have more trouble getting free of them because of their sweetness.

The best sentence? The shortest.

To imagine is everything, to know is nothing at all.

I do not know any reading more easy, more fascinating, more delightful than a catalogue.

Of all the ways of defining man, the worst is the one which makes him out to be a rational animal.

What can be more foolish than to think that all this rare fabric of heaven and earth could come by chance, when all the skill of art is not able to make an oyster!

Justice is the sanction of established injustice.