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Anatole France quotes

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“To know is nothing at all; to imagine is everything.” Anatole France, The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard
“Time deals gently only with those who take it gently.” Anatole France, The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard
“But man is so made that he can only find relaxation from one kind of labour by taking up another.” Anatole France, The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard
“After all, it is in the ability to deceive oneself that the greatest talent is shown, is it not?” Anatole France, The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard
“In every ordered State, wealth is a sacred thing: in democracies it is the only sacred thing.” Anatole France, Penguin Island
“An education which does not cultivate the will, is an education that depraves the mind.” Anatole France, The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard
“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!” Anatole France, The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard
“The whole art of teaching is only the art of awakening the natural curiosity of young minds for the purpose of satisfying it afterwards; and curiosity itself can be vivid and wholesome only in proportion as the mind is contented and happy.” Anatole France, The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard
“there is not a single one of those books which does not contradict some other book; so that by the time one has read them all one does not know what to think about anything.” Anatole France, The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard
“Lovers who love truly do not write down their happiness.” Anatole France, The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard
“Each one dreams the dream of life in his own way. I have dreamed it in my library; and when the hour shall come in which I must leave this world, may it please God to take me from my ladder—from before my shelves of books!” Anatole France, The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard
“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. But the power of love itself weakens and gradually becomes lost with age, like all the other energies of man.” Anatole France, The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard
“The people who have no weaknesses are terrible; there is no way of taking advantage of them.” Anatole France, The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard
“Unhappiness does make people look stupid,—I am perfectly sure it does.” Anatole France, The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard
“Jealousy is a virtue of democracies which preserves them from tyrants.” Anatole France, Penguin Island
“What we call morality is merely a desperate enterprise, a forlorn hope, on the part of our fellow creatures to reverse the order of the universe, which is strife and murder, the blind interplay of hostile forces.” Anatole France, The Gods Are Athirst
“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...” Anatole France, The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard
“For the moment the peril was nowhere and yet everywhere. The majority remained solid; but the leaders became stiff and exacting.” Anatole France, Penguin Island
“Soon those three udders of modern nations, monopolies, bill discounting, and fraudulent speculation, were swollen with the milk of wealth.” Anatole France, Penguin Island
“Drink! The flies have not spoilt my vintage; the vines were dry before they came.” Anatole France, Penguin Island
“As a disciple of Mably and Rousseau, he flattered himself on being a man without any prejudices; and this pretension itself is a very great prejudice.” Anatole France, The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard
“That child whose mother has never smiled upon him is worthy neither of the table of the gods nor of the couch of the goddesses.” Anatole France, The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard
“Reason is our guide and beacon-light; but when you have made a divinity of it, it will blind you and instigate you to crime” Anatole France, The Gods Are Athirst
“A man's life would be intolerable if he knew what is to befall him.” Anatole France, The Gods Are Athirst
“Nature teaches us to devour each other and gives us the example of all the crimes and all the vices which the social state corrects or conceals.” Anatole France, The Gods Are Athirst
“There are forces . . . infinitely more powerful than reason and science . . . Ignorance and folly” Anatole France, Thaïs
“And in truth man is made rather to eat ices than to pore over old texts.” Anatole France, The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard

Related topics

ignorance mind love life imagination books nature democracy science admiration wealth persuasion contradiction vice crimes knowledge labor time man education

Related sources

The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard (17)
Penguin Island (5)
The Gods Are Athirst (4)
Thaïs (1)