Quotes by French Authors - Page 12

The opportunity for doing mischief is found a hundred times a day and of doing good once in a year.
Voltaire
The progress of rivers to the ocean is not so rapid as that of man to error.
Voltaire
Opportunities are often things you haven't noticed the first time around.
Catherine Deneuve
The greatest achievement of the human spirit is to live up to one's opportunities and make the most of one's resources.
Vauvenargues
In great affairs we ought to apply ourselves less to creating chances than to profiting from those that are offered.
François de La Rochefoucauld
Freedom is nothing else but a chance to be better whereas enslavement is a certainty of the worst.
Albert Camus
Ability is of little account without opportunity.
Napoléon Bonaparte
Those who never retract their opinions love themselves more than they love truth.
Joseph Joubert
Force and not opinion is the queen of the world but it it opinion that uses the force.
Pascal
I know where there is more wisdom than is found in Napoleon Voltaire or all the ministers present and to come - in public opinion.
Talleyrand
There never were two opinions alike in all the world no more than two hours or two grains: the most universal quality is diversity.
Michel de Montaigne
If you want people to think well of you do not speak well of yourself.
Blaise Pascal
Time is a great manager: it arranges things well.
Pierre Corneille
Time is a river without banks.
Marc Chagall
Time is one kind of robber whom the law does not strike at and who steals what is most precious to men.
Napoléon Bonaparte
Time is an avid gambler who has no need to cheat to win every time.
Charles Baudelaire
The value of life lies not in the length of days but in the use we make of them a man may live long yet live very little.
Michel de Montaigne
The time which we have at our disposal every day is elastic the passions that we feel expand it those that we inspire contract it and habit fills up what remains.
Marcel Proust
It is not in novelty but in habit that we find the greatest pleasure.
Raymond Radiguet
Think that day lost whose descending sun views from thy hand no noble action done.
Joseph Joubert
The most thoroughly wasted of all days is that on which one has not laughed.
Nicolas de Chamfort
To accomplish our destiny ... we must cover before nightfall the distance assigned to each of us.
Dr. Alexis Carrel
Without duty life is soft and boneless.
Joseph Joubert
The power of a man's virtue should not be measured by his special efforts but by his ordinary doing.
Blaise Pascal
In order to be utterly happy the only thing necessary is to refrain from comparing this moment with other moments in the past which I often did not fully enjoy because I was comparing them with other moments of the future.
André Gide
Taking time to live is taking time to appreciate simple silence as better than any kind of talk or watching a flower or watching a guy wash the windows on a skyscraper and wondering what he is thinking.
Gersi Douchan
Let us savour the swift delights of the most beautiful of our days!
Alphonse de Lamartine
Those who make the worst use of their time most complain of its brevity.
Jean de La Bruyère
You can kill time or kill yourself it comes to the same thing in the end.
Elsa Triolet
He who would make serious use of his life must always act as though he had a long time to live and schedule his time as though he were about to die.
Emile Littre
He who every morning plans the transactions of the day and follows out that plan carries a thread that will guide him through the labyrinth of the most busy life. ... If the disposal of time is surrendered merely to the chance of incident chaos will soon reign.
Victor Hugo
Every minute of life carries with it its miraculous value and its face of eter1nal youth.
Albert Camus
It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important.
Antoine De Saint Exupery
We work not only to produce but to give value to time.
Eugène Delacroix
You may ask me for anything you like except time.
Napoléon Bonaparte
He who has lived a day has lived an age.
Jean de La Bruyère
One must always tell what one sees. Above all which is more difficult one must always see what one sees.
Charles Péguy
Plain as a nose in a man's face.
François Rabelais
Give me a man with a good allowance of nose ... when I want any good head-work done I choose a man - provided his education has been suitable - with a long nose.
Napoleon
If the nose of Cleopatra had been a little shorter the whole face of the world would have been changed.
Pascal
No one is exempt from talking nonsense the misfortune is to do it solemnly.
Michel Montaigne
What helps me go forward is that I stay receptive I feel that anything can happen.
Anouk Aimee
Desire and hope will push us on toward the future.
Michel de Montaigne
Never admit defeat!
Arthur Rimbaud
I bend but I do not break.
Jean de La Fontaine
This man Wellington is so stupid he does not know when he is beaten and goes on fighting.
Napoléon Bonaparte
Life begins on the other side of despair.
Jean-Paul Sartre
The way of progress is neither swift nor easy.
Marie Curie
Genius begins great works labor alone finishes it.
Joseph Joubert
Live with no time out.
Simone de Beauvoir
Night's black Mantle covers all alike.
Guillaume S. du Bartas
Every editor of newspapers pays tribute to the devil.
Jean de La Fontaine
Four hostile newspapers are more to be feared than a thousand bayonets.
Napoleon
If some great catastrophe is not announced every morning we feel a certain void. 'Nothing in the paper today ' we sigh.
Paul Valéry
When we hear news we should always wait for the sacrament of confirmation.
Voltaire
We never live but we are always in the expectation of living.
Voltaire
Necessity is often the spur to genius.
Honoré de Balzac
Nature like a kind and smiling mother lends herself to our dreams and cherishes our fancies.
Victor Hugo
Nature abhors a vacuum.
François Rabelais
Nature has always had more force than education.
Voltaire