Anatole France Quotes

An education isn't how much you have committed to memory, or even how much you know. It's being able to differentiate between what you know and what you don't.

The more you say, the less they remember.

To accomplish great things, we must not only act, but also dream; not only plan, but also believe.

Intelligent women always marry fools

The Future is hidden even from those who are forging it.

Nature, in her indifference, makes no distinction between good and evil.

A good critic is the man who describes his adventures among masterpieces.

The truth is that life is delicious, horrible, charming, frightful, sweet, bitter, and that is everything.

The law in its majesty prohibits rich and poor alike from sleeping under bridges.

The good critic is he who relates the adventures of his soul among masterpieces.

An education which does not cultivate the will is an education that depraves the mind.

Human affairs inspire in noble hearts only two feelings-admiration or pity.

To die for an idea is to set a rather high price upon conjecture.

Our passions are ourselves.

An old philosopher said to Monsieur Coignard, a Reverend Father: 'You are a pig!' To which Abad Coignard answered: 'You flatter me, sir. But unfortunately, I'm only a man.'

We live between two dense clouds; the forgetting of what was and the uncertainty of what will be.

The Arab who built himself a hut with marbles from the temple of Palmyra is more philosophical than all the curators of the museums of London, Paris, and Munich.

It is remarkable how great an influence our clothes have on our moral state.

The future is a convenient place for dreams.

Man is a rational animal. He can think up a reason for anything he wants to believe.

Without lies humanity would perish of despair and boredom.

Wandering re-establishes the original harmony which once existed between man and the universe.

The finest words in the world are only vain sounds if you can't understand them. The best sentence? The shortest.

Irony and pity are two good counselors: one, in smiling, makes life pleasurable; the other, who cries, makes it sacred.

Universal peace will be realized, not because man will become better, but because a new order of things, a new science, new economic necessities, will impose peace.

I cling to my imperfection, as the very essence of my being.

The power of love itself weakens and gradually becomes lost with age, like all the other energies of man.

Stupidity is far more dangerous than evil, for evil takes a break from time to time, stupidity does not.

Religion has done love a great service by making it a sin.

It is good to collect things, but it is better to go on walks.

There is only one science, love, one riches, love, only one policy, love. To make love is all the law and the prophets.

It is only the poor who pay cash, and that not from virtue, but because they are refused credit.

It is by acts and not by ideas that people live.

You become a good writer just as you become a good joiner: by planing down your sentences.

It is well for the heart to be naive and for the mind not to be.

Of all the sexual aberrations, chastity is the strangest.

Innocence most often is a good fortune and not a virtue.

It is in the ability to deceive oneself that the greatest talent is shown.

A simple style is like white light. Although complex, it does not appear to be so.

Good angels are fallible ... they sin every day and fall from Heaven like flies.

We reproach people for talking about themselves but it is the subject they treat best.

What men call civilization is the condition of present customs; what they call barbarism, the condition of past ones.

I am a physician. I keep a drug-shop of lies. I give relief, consolation. Can one console and relieve without lying? ... Only women and doctors know how necessary and how helpful lies are to men.

We thank God for having created this world, and praise Him for having made another, quite different one, where the wrongs of this one are corrected.

God, conquered, will become Satan; Satan, conquering, will become God. May the fates spare me this terrible lot; I love the Hell which formed my genius. I love the Earth where I have done some good, if it be possible to do any good in this fearful world where beings live but by rapine.

What we call strategy is mainly just crossing rivers on bridges and passing mountains though cols.

Ignorance and error are necessary to life, like bread and water.

We find it hard to picture to ourselves the state of mind of a man of older days who firmly believed that the Earth was the centre of the Universe, and that all the heavenly bodies revolved around it. He could feel beneath his feet the writhings of the damned amid the flames; very likely he had seen with his own eyes and smelt with his own nostrils the sulphurous fumes of Hell escaping from some fissure in the rocks. Looking upwards, he beheld ... the incorruptible firmament, wherein the stars hung like so many lamps.