Anatole France Quotes

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

~ Anatole France

To accomplish great things, we must dream as well as act.

~ Anatole France

Time deals gently only with those who take it gently.

~ Anatole France

It is possible that these millions of suns, along with thousands of millions more we cannot see, make up altogether but a globule of blood or lymph in the veins of an animal, of a minute insect, hatched in a world of whose vastness we can frame no conception, but which nevertheless would itself, in proportion to some other world, be no more than a speck of dust.

~ Anatole France

It is the certainty that they possess the truth that makes men cruel.

~ Anatole France

We have never heard the devil's side of the story, God wrote all the book.

~ Anatole France

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

~ Anatole France

To accomplish great things we must not only act, but also dream; not only plan, but also believe.(From an introductory speech at a session of the Académie Française, December 24, 1896)

~ Anatole France

It is the certainty that they possess the truth that makes men cruel. -Anatole France, novelist, essayist, Nobel laureate (1844-1924)

~ Anatole France

If we don't change, we don't grow. If we don't grow, we aren't really living.

~ Anatole France

In art as in love, instinct is enough.

~ Anatole France

Of all sexual aberrations, chastity is the strangest.

~ Anatole France

For the majority of people, though they do not know what to do with this life, long for another that shall have no end.

~ Anatole France

It is good to collect things, but it is better to go on walks.

~ Anatole France

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

~ Anatole France

Suffering — how divine it is, how misunderstood! 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

All writers of confessions from Augustine on down, have always remained a little in love with their sins.

~ Anatole France

Man is so made that he can only find relaxation from one kind of labor by taking up another.

~ Anatole France

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. We should love virtue; but it is well to know that this is simply and solely a convenient expedient invented by men in order to live comfortably together. 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. She destroys herself, and the more I think of things, the more convinced I am that the universe is mad. Theologians and philosophers, who make God the author of Nature and the architect of the universe, show Him to us as illogical and ill-conditioned. They declare Him benevolent, because they are afraid of Him, but they are forced to admit that His acts are atrocious. They attribute a malignity to him seldom to be found even in mankind. And that is how they get human beings to adore Him. For our miserable race would never lavish worship on just and benevolent deities from which they would have nothing to fear; they would feel only a barren gratitude for their benefits. Without purgatory and hell, your good God would be a mighty poor creature.

~ Anatole France

Ignorance is the necessary condition, i do not say of happiness, but of life itself. If we knew everything, we could not endure existence a single hour. The sentiments that make it sweet to us, or at any rate tolerable, spring from a falsehood, and are fed on illusions.If, like God, a man possessed the truth, the sole and perfect truth, and once let it escape out of his hands, the world would be annihilated there and then, and the universe melt away instantly like a shadow.

~ Anatole France

Dictionary: The universe in alphabetical order.

~ Anatole France

I sought out the laws which govern nature, solid or ethereal, and after much pondering I perceived that the Universe had not been formed as its pretended Creator would have us believe; I knew that all that exists, exists of itself and not by the caprice of Iahveh; that the world is itself its own creator and the spirit its own God. Henceforth I despised Iahveh for his imposture, and I hated him because he showed himself to be opposed to all that I found desirable and good: liberty, curiosity, doubt.

~ Anatole France

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

~ Anatole France

All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind usis a part of ourselves. We must die to one life before we can enter another

~ Anatole France

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

~ Anatole France

The history books which contain no lies are extremely tedious

~ Anatole France

He flattered himself on being a man without any prejudices, and his pretension itself is a very great prejudice.

~ Anatole France

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

Never lend books - nobody ever returns them the only books I have in my library are those which people have lent me.

~ Anatole France

I do not know any reading more easy more fascinating more delightful than a catalogue.

~ Anatole France

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

~ Anatole France

All changes even the most longed for have their melancholy for what we leave behind us is apart of ourselves we must die to one life before we can enter into another.

~ Anatole France

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

And the thing has been said and said well have no scruple. Take it and copy it.

~ Anatole France

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

~ Anatole France

Time deals gently only with those who take it gently.

~ Anatole France

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

~ Anatole France

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

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

~ Anatole France

It is by acts and not by ideas that people live.

~ Anatole France