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Action(s)
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It is by acts and not by ideas that people live.
-Anatole France
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Adversity
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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.
-Anatole France
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Ambition
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To accomplish great things, we must not only act, but also dream; not only plan, but also believe.
-Anatole France
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Art
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In art as in love, instinct is enough.
-Anatole France
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Authors & Writing
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A writer is rarely so well inspired as when he talks about himself.
-Anatole France
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Censorship
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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.
-Anatole France
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Chance
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The pseudonym for God when He did not want to sign.
-Anatole France
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Chance is the pseudonym God uses when He does not want to sign His name.
-Anatole France
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Change
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Night has come! Leaning from the window, we gaze at the vast sombre stretch of the city below us, pierced with multitudinous points of light. Jeanne presses her hand to her forehead as she leans upon the window-bar, and seems a little sad. And I say to myself as I watch her: All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves: we must die in one life before we can enter into another!
And as if answering my thought, the young girl murmurs to me.
My guardian, I am so happy; and still I feel as if I wanted to cry!
http://www.archive.org/stream/crimeofsylvestre00franuoft/crimeofsylvestre00franuoft_djvu.txt
-Anatole France, The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard
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Criticism
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The good critic is he who relates the adventures of his soul among masterpieces.
-Anatole France
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Deception/Lying
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Without lies humanity would perish of despair and boredom.
-Anatole France
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Dogs
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The dog is a religious animal. In his savage state he worships the moon and the lights that float upon the waters. These are his gods to whom he appeals at night with long-drawn howls.
-Anatole France, The Coming of Riquet
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Education
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Nine tenths of education is encouragement.
-Anatole France
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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.
-Anatole France
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Ego
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We reproach people for talking about themselves; but it is the subject they treat best.
-Anatole France
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Enthusiasm
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I prefer the errors of enthusiasm to the indifference of wisdom.
-Anatole France
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Fashion
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Only men who are not interested in women are interested in women's clothes. Men who like women never notice what they wear.
-Anatole France
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Future, The
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That man is prudent who neither hopes nor fears anything from the uncertain events of the future.
-Anatole France
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Greed
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The average man does not know what to do with this life, yet wants another one which will last forever.
-Anatole France
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Growth
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If we don't change, we don't grow. If we don't grow, we aren't really living.
-Anatole France
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History
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History books that contain no lies are extremely dull.
-Anatole France
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Humanity
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It is human nature to think wisely and act foolishly.
-Anatole France
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Of all the ways of defining man, the worst is the one which makes him out to be a rational animal.
-Anatole France
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Ignorance & Stupidity
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A person is never happy except at the price of some ignorance.
-Anatole France
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Imagination
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To imagine is everything, to know is nothing at all.
-Anatole France, The Crime of Sylvester Bernard, 1881
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Innocence
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Innocence most often is a good fortune and not a virtue.
-Anatole France
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It is well for the heart to be naive and the mind not to be.
-Anatole France
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Irony
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Irony is the gaiety of reflection and the joy of wisdom.
-Anatole France
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Libraries
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Never lend books, for no one ever returns them. The only books I have in my library are those that other folks have lent me.
-Anatole France
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Love
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Lovers who love truly do not write down their happiness.
-Anatole France
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Money
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It is only the poor who pay cash, and that not from virtue, but because they are refused credit.
-Anatole France
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Morals
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It is almost systematically to constitute a natural moral law. 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 difference between right and wrong.
-Anatole France
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Nature
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Nature has no principles. She makes no distinction between good and evil.
-Anatole France
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Plagiarism
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When a thing has been said and said well, have no scruple. Take it and copy it.
-Anatole France
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Poverty
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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.
-Anatole France
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I thank fate for having made me born poor. Poverty taught me the true value of the gifts useful to life.
-Anatole France
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Reading
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The books that everybody admires are those that nobody reads.
-Anatole France
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Sanity
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What frightens us most in a madman is his sane conversation.
-Anatole France
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Shopping
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There are very honest people who do not think that they have had a bargain unless they have cheated a merchant.
-Anatole France
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Teaching
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The whole art of teaching is only the art of awakening the natural curiosity of young minds for the purpose of satisfying it afterwards.
-Anatole France
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Understanding
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It is better to understand a little than to misunderstand a lot.
-Anatole France
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Words
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The finest words in the world are only vain sounds if you cannot understand them.
-Anatole France
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Books by and about Anatole France
