Quotes from Anatole France

He would not stoop even to pick up the old manuscript I am going to seek with so much trouble and fatigue. And in truth man is made rather to eat ices than to pore over old texts.

Men,' I said to myself, 'suffer because they are deprived of that which they believe to be good; or because, possessing it they fear to lose it; or because they endure that which they believe to be an evil. Put an end to all beliefs of this kind, and the evils would disappear.

Durante minha longa carreira de magistrado, jamais tive conhecimento de um erro judiciário. — Eis aí uma declaração tranquilizadora - disse o senhor de Terremondre. — E que a mim me gela de pavor - murmurou monsieur Bergeret.

Having, he explained, studied Nature, he had found her in perpetual conflict with the teachings of the Master he served. This Master, greedy of praise, whom he had for a long time adored, appeared to him now as an ignorant, stupid, and cruel tyrant.

De toutes les définitions de l'homme la plus mauvaise me paraît celle qui en fait un animal raisonnable.

Let us love the books which please us and cease to trouble ourselves about classifications and schools of literature.

Eu não espero que os adversários da verdade confessem que se enganaram. Uma atitude como essa só é possível às almas mais elevadas.

We remain forever children, and are always running after new toys.

las pobres gentes, adiestradas en la obediencia por sus antiguos tiranos y por sus recientes libertadores, se alejaron de allí cabizbajas, arrastrando los pies.

The beautiful things I have seen are still so vivid in my mind that I feel the task of writing them would be a useless fatigue. Why spoil my pleasure-trip by collecting notes? Lovers who love truly do not write down their happiness.

Qu'est-ce que veut dire voyager? Changer de lieu? Pas du tout! En voyageant, on change aussi ses opinions et ses préjugés.

The French having passed from feudalism to monarchy, and from monarchy to a financial oligarchy, will easily pass from a financial oligarchy to anarchy.

The trouble of living a long time is not that one lasts too long, but that one sees all about him pass away- mother, wife, friends, children. Nature makes and unmakes all these divine treasures with gloomy indifference, and at last, we find that we have not loved, we have only been embracing shadows.

Within every one of us, there lives both a Don Quixote and a Sancho Panza to whom we hearken by turns; and though Sancho most persuades us, it is Don Quixote that we find ourselves obliged to admire.

Si cinquante millions de gens disent une sottise, ça n'en reste pas moins une sottise.

Nevertheless, I am greatly moved by my passions at times, and it has more than once been my fate to lose my sleep for the sake of a few pages written by some forgotten monk or printed by some humble apprentice of Peter Schoeffer. And if these fierce enthusiasms are slowly being quenched in me, it is only because I am being slowly quenched myself. Our passions are ourselves. My old books are me. I am just as old and thumbworn as they are.

Monsieur," said Madame des Aubels, "go away, I beg you." But the Angel hearkened not, and continued: "Saint Augustine, in his True Religion, Chapter XIII; Saint Gregory, in his Morals, Chapter XXIV; Isidore——" "Monsieur, let me get my things on; I am in a hurry." "In his treatise on The Greatest Good, Book I, Chapter XII; Bede on Job——" "Oh, please, Monsieur ...

Dans le salon de madame Clarence, on parlait de l'amour ; et l'on en disait des choses délicieuses.

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 into another!

Bonnard," I said to myself, "thou knowest how to decipher old texts; but thou dost not know how to read in the Book of Life. That giddy little Madame Trepof, whom thou once believed to possess no more soul than a bird, has expended, in pure gratitude, more zeal and finer tact than thou didst ever show for anybody's sake. Right royally hath she repaid thee for the log-fire of her churching-day!

Science neither cares to please nor to displease. She is inhuman. It is not science but poetry that charms and consoles. And that is why poetry is more necessary than science.

Je mets pas mal de choses d'abord sur mon papier ; ensuite j'ajoute la simplicité.

L'innocence, le plus souvent, est un bonheur et non pas une vertu.

Je dis la folie, et non point la démence. La démence est la perte des facultés intellectuelles. La folie n'est qu'un usage bizarre et singulier de ces facultés.