Anatole France Quotes | GloryQuotes

Anatole France Quotes About Life

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

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

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

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.

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

I thank fate for having made me born poor. Poverty taught me the true value of the gifts useful to life.

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 another.

Anatole France Quotes About Love

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

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.

Lovers who love truly do not write down their happiness.

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

In art as in love, instinct is enough.

More Quotes by Anatole France

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

That man is prudent who neither hopes nor fears anything from the uncertain events of the future.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Only men who are not interested in women are interested in women's clothes. Men who like women never notice what they wear.

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

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

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

The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself a fool.

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.

Chance is perhaps the pseudonym of God when he did not want to sign.

One thing above all gives charm to men's thoughts, and this is unrest. A mind that is not uneasy irritates and bores me.

No government ought to be without censors; and where the press is free, no one ever will. Chance is the pseudonym of God when he did not want to sign.

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

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

Nine tenths of education is encouragement.

History books that contain no lies are extremely dull.

It is human nature to think wisely and act in an absurd fashion.

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

What can be more foolish than to think that all this rare fabric of heaven and earth could come by chance, when all the skill of art is not able to make an oyster!

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

The books that everybody admires are those that nobody reads.

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

Existence would be intolerable if we were never to dream.

If a million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing.

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.

It is better to understand little than to misunderstand a lot.

The greatest virtue of man is perhaps curiosity.

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

Without lies humanity would perish of despair and boredom.

Of all the sexual aberrations, chastity is the strangest.

If the path be beautiful, let us not ask where it leads.

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

The poor have to labour in the face of the majestic equality of the law, which forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.

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

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.

Never lend books, for no one ever returns them; the only books I have in my library are books that other folks have left me.

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.

Silence is the wit of fools.

Browse 55 quotes attributed to Anatole France, listed in the source data as a French Novelist, organized around themes such as Life, Love, Education. Use the topic links to explore similar quotes, or browse the full author collection in one place.