Quotes from Anatole France

What we call happiness is what we do not know.

When a history book contains no lies it is always tedious.

Without lies humanity would perish of despair and boredom.

When a thing has been said and well, have no scruple. Take it and copy it.

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

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.

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

To accomplish great things, we must dream as well as act.

Jealousy is a virtue of democracies which preserves them from tyrants.

Christianity has done a great deal for love by making a sin of it.

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

In order that knowledge be properly digested it must have been swallowed with a good appetite.

The future is a convenient place for dreams

The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, or to steal bread.

What frightens us most in a madman is his sane conversation.

I would define a book as a work of magic whence escape, all kinds of images to trouble the souls and change the hearts of men.

The greatest virtue of man is perhaps curiosity.

I prefer the folly of enthusiasm to the indifference of wisdom.

The whole art of teaching is only the art of awakening the natural curiosity of young minds for the purpose of satisfying it afterwards

Of all the sexual aberrations, chastity is the strangest.

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

To accomplish great things, we must dream as well as act.

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

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