Anatole France Quotes (92 Quotes)

The pseudonym for God when He did not want to sign.

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

A woman must decide between a man who women like, and then have no security, or a man who women dont like, and have no happiness.

It's not by amusing oneself that one learns.

A person is never happy except at the price of some ignorance.

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

Without lies humanity would perish of despair and boredom.

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.

Nature has no principles. She makes no distinction between good and evil.

The whole art of teaching is the only 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

The average man does not know what to do with this life, yet wants another one which will last forever.

The first virtue of all really great men is that they are sincere

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.

Until one has loved an animal a part of one's soul remains unawakened.

Make love now, by night and by day, in winter and in summer... You are in the world for that and the rest of life is nothing but vanity, illusion, waste. There is only one science, love, only one riches, love, only one policy, love. To make love is all the law, and the prophets.

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

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

A good critic is one who narrates the adventures of his mind among masterpieces.

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

The absurdity of a religious practice may be clearly demonstrated without lessening the numbers of people who indulge in it

Silence is the wit of fools.

Without the utopians of other times, men would still live in caves, miserable and naked...utopia is the principle of all progress, adn the essay into a better world.

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.

We live too much in books and not enough in nature, and we are very much like the simpleton of a Pliny the Younger, who went on studying a Greek author while before his eyes Vesuvius was overwhelming five cities beneath the ashes.

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

Lovers who love truly do not write down their happiness.

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

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

You learn to speak by speaking, to study by studying, to run by running, to work by working; in just the same way, you learn to love by loving.

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

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

If it were absolutely necessary to choose, I would rather be guilty of an immoral act than of a cruel one

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

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.

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

Nature has no principles. She furnishes us with no reason to believe that human life is to be respected. Nature, in her indifference, makes no distinction between good and evil.

We do not know what to do with this short life, yet we want another which will be eternal.

Unhappiness does make people look stupid.

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 the mind not to be.

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

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

The greatest virtue of man is perhaps curiosity.

The finest words in the world are only vain sounds, if you cannot comprehend them

Existence would be intolerable if we were never to dream.

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

The books that everybody admires are those nobody reads.

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