Quotes by French Authors - Page 139

A letter is a soul, so faithful an echo of the speaking voice that to the sensitive it is among the richest treasures of love.
Honoré de Balzac
For this was the round of love: fear which leads on desire, tenderness and fury, and that brutal anguish which triumphantly follows pleasure.
Françoise Sagan
When lovers kiss on the cheeks, it is because they are searching, feeling for one another's lips. Lovers are made by a kiss.
Émile Zola
When I met a truly beautiful girl, I would tell her that if she spent the night with me, I would write a novel or a story about her. This usually worked; and if her name was to be in the title of the story, it almost always worked. Then, later, when we'd passed a night of delicious love-making together, after she’d gone and I’d felt that feeling of happiness mixed with sorrow, I sometimes would write a book or story about her. Sometimes her character, her way about herself, her love-making, it sometimes marked me so heavily that I couldn't go on in life and be happy unless I wrote a book or a story about that woman, the happy and sad memory of that woman. That was the only way to keep her, and to say goodbye to her without her ever leaving.
Roman Payne
We were hooked when we woke.We had arms for each other.But I yearned to resumeMy dreams of another.
Roman Payne
He was now in that state of fire that she loved. She wanted to be burnt.
Anaïs Nin
You know what charm is: a way of getting the answer yes without having asked any clear question.
Albert Camus
There is neither happiness nor misery in the world; there is only the comparison of one state with another, nothing more.
Alexandre Dumas
La felicità non consiste nel mettersi al riparo dalla sofferenza, ma di integrarla al tessuto della nostra esistenza.
Éric-Emmanuel Schmitt
Happiness thinks only of itself.
Raymond Radiguet
He was no god, just an artist; and when an artist is a man, he needs a woman to create like a god.
Roman Payne
Just as there is a moment when the artist must stop, when the sculpture must be left as it is, the painting untouched—just as a determination not to know serves the maker more than all the resources of clairvoyance—so there must be a minimum of ignorance in order to perfect a life in happiness. Thosewho lack such a thing must set about acquiring it: unintelligence must be earned.
Albert Camus
When no possessions keep us, when no countries contain us, and no time detains us, man becomes a heroic wanderer, and woman, a wanderess.
Roman Payne
What is a Wanderess? Bound by no boundaries, contained by no countries, tamed by no time, she is the force of nature’s course.
Roman Payne
A woman must prefer her liberty over a man. To be happy, she must. A man to be happy, however, must yearn for his woman more than his liberty. This is the rightful order.
Roman Payne
In moments like these, offering up his heart at the hour that night flowers offer up their perfume, lit up like a lamp in the middle of the starry night, full of ecstasy in the middle of the universal radiance of creation, he could not perhaps have said himself what was happening in his spirit; he felt something soar up out of him and something fly down into him. Mysterious exchanges between the bottomless well of the soul and the bottomless well of the universe!
Victor Hugo
Frail to the point of invalidism, without family and with nothing to look forward to, she [Mlle Muguette] yet contrived to be happy. How strange a thing is happiness! Mlle Pimpalet, the notary's wife, arrogantly middle-class, well-furnished with the goods of this world, cared for and waited on, yet invariably looked as if she had been given rat poison for breakfast. While Muguette with nothing, almost on the parish, was radiant with carefree joyousness. Her courage almost made people want to kiss her.
Gabriel Chevallier
Je ne laissa entrer que le plaisair, oui, j’ai cette capacité-là, moi, de filtrer ce qui m’arrive, de choisir, j’ai choisi de ne pas être triste.
Justine Lévy
Faut être drôlement heureux pour supporter d'être triste, drôlement heureux ou drôlement courageux, et moi je ne suis pas très courageuse, et je suis très très malheureuse.
Justine Lévy
Much that for us is fraught with with happiness or misery, remains almost unnoticed by the rest of the world.
Marcel Proust
Happiness is a masterpiece: the slightest error compromises it, the slightest hesitation undermines it, the slightest excess corrupts it, the slightest vulgarity defiles it.
Marguerite Yourcenar
De temps à autre, il est bon de faire une pause dans notre quête du bonheur et d'être simplement heureux.
Guillaume Apollinaire
A fondness for roving, for making a name for themselves in their onw country, and for boasting of what they had seen in their travels, was so strong in our two wanderers, that they resolved to be no longer happy; and demanded permission of the king to leave the country.
Voltaire
It's one thing thinking something and another thing knowing it.
François Lelord
Sonnez, grelots; sonnez, clochettes; sonnez, cloches!Car mon rêve impossible a pris corps et je l’aiEntre mes bras pressé : le Bonheur, cet ailéVoyageur qui de l’Homme évite les approches,- Sonnez grelots; sonnez, clochettes, sonnez, cloches!Le Bonheur a marché côte à côte avec moi;Mais la FATALITÉ ne connaît point de trêve :Le ver est dans le fruit, le réveil dans le rêve,Et le remords est dans l’amour : telle est la loi.- Le Bonheur a marché côte à côte avec moi.
Paul Verlaine
We need but little learning to live happily.
Michel de Montaigne
...because all happiness is contagious, and disarms the spirit of hatred.
Irène Némirovsky
Are you what is called a lucky man? Well, you are sad every day. Each day has its great grief or its little care. Yesterday you were trembling for the health of one who is dear to you, today you fear for your own; tomorrow it will be an anxiety about money, the next day the slanders of a calumniator, the day after the misfortune of a friend; then the weather, then something broken or lost, then a pleasure for which you are reproached by your conscience or your vertebral column; another time, the course of public affairs. Not to mention heartaches. And so on. One cloud is dissipated, another gathers. Hardly one day in a hundred of unbroken joy and sunshine. And you are of that small number who are lucky! As for other men, stagnant night is upon them.
Victor Hugo
... there was no need for him to hasten towards the attainment of a happiness already captured and held in a safe place, which would not escape his grasp again.
Marcel Proust
When a Wanderess has been caged, or perched with her wings clipped, She lives like a Stoic, She lives most heroic, smiling with ruby, moistened lips once her cup of Death is welcome sipped.
Roman Payne
Das Glück ist das einzige, das sich verdoppelt, wenn man es teilt.
Albert Schweitzer
Heureux sont ceux qui peuvent aimer et haïr sans feinte, sans détour, sans nuance.
Irène Némirovsky
O seasons, O castles,What soul is without flaws?All its lore is known to me,Felicity, it enchants us all.
Arthur Rimbaud
There is no greater misery than false joys.
Bernard of Clairvaux
Our ancestors derived less from life than we do, but they also expected much less and were less intent on controlling the future. We are of the arrogant generations who believe a lasting happiness was promised to us at birth. Promised? By whom?
Amin Maalouf
What did it matter if he existed for two or for twenty years? Happiness was the fact that he had existed.
Albert Camus
The basic mistake people make is to think that happiness is the goal!
François Lelord
Many people see happiness only in their future.
François Lelord
I am happy and content because I think I am.
Alain-René Le Sage
Original, in French: La bonne cuisine est la base du véritable bonheur. English: Good food is the foundation of genuine happiness.
Auguste Escoffier
Do we take less pride in the possession of our home because its walls were built by some unknown carpenter, its tapestries woven by some unknown weaver on a far Oriental shore, in some antique time? No. We show our home to our friends with the pride as if it were our home, which it is. Why then should we take less pride when reading a book written by some long-dead author? Is it not our book just as much, or even more so, than theirs? So the landowner says, ‘Look at my beautiful home! Isn’t it fine?’ And not, ‘Look at the home so-and-so has built.’ Thus we shouldn’t cry, ‘Look what so-and-so has written. What a genius so-and-so is!’ But rather, ‘Look at what I have read! Am I not a genius? Have I not invented these pages? The walls of this universe, did I not build? The souls of these characters, did I not weave?
Roman Payne
Many people think that happiness comes from having more power or more money.
François Lelord
Não é verdade que a felicidade é aquilo que procuramos sem nunca sermos capazes de a reconhecer?
Marc Levy
There are some delightful places in this world which have a sensual charm for the eyes. One loves them with a physical love. We people who are attracted by the countryside cherish fond memories of certain springs, certain woods, certain ponds, certain hills, which have become familiar sights and can touch our hearts like happy events.Sometimes indeed the memory goes back towards a forest glade, or a spot on a river bank or an orchard in blossom, glimpsed only once on a happy day, but preserved in our heart.
Guy de Maupassant
Sometimes happiness is not knowing the whole story.
François Lelord
Es dauerte einen Moment, bis er ihr antwortete:Nein, ich spreche von... von eurer Freiheit, glaube ich. Von dem Glück, das ihr habt, für euch zu leben und auf alles andere zu pfeifen.
Anna Gavalda
According to the philosopher Andre Comte-Sponville: The wise man has nothing left to expect or to hope for. Because he is entirely happy, he needs nothing. Because he needs nothing, he is entirely happy.
Matthieu Ricard
He who has felt the deepest grief is best able to experience supreme happiness.
Alexandre Dumas
Every day has its great grief or its small anxiety. ... One cloud is dispelled, another forms. There is hardly one day in a hundred of real joy and bright sunshine.
Victor Hugo
In order to have great happiness, you have to have great pain and unhappiness-otherwise how would you know when you're happy?
Leslie Caron
Straight lines go too quickly to appreciate the pleasures of the journey. They rush straight to their target and then die in the very moment of their triumph without having thought, loved, suffered or enjoyed themselves. Broken lines do not know what they want. With their caprices they cut time up, abuse routes, slash the joyous flowers and split the peaceful fruits with their corners. It is another story with curved lines. The song of the curved line is called happiness.
René Crevel
There are hours for rest, and hours for wakefulness; nights for sobriety and nights for drunkenness—(if only so that possession of the former allows us to discern the latter when we have it; for sad as it is, no human body can be happily drunk all the time).
Roman Payne
If there was one thing that life has taught me, it’s to accept the most foolish and unthinkable happiness.
Anne-Laure Bondoux
Maybe happiness too is a metaphor invented on a day of boredom
Gustave Flaubert
Happiness lies for those who cry, those who hurt, those who have searched, and those who have tried for only they can appreciate the importance of people who have touched their lives.
Victor Hugo
Be happy. It's one way of being wise
Colette
If one were to build the house of happiness, the largest space would be the waiting room.
Jules Renard
And he, like many jaded people, had few pleasures left in life save good food and drink.
Honoré de Balzac
Le bonheur est cette danse où l'on s'approche et l'on s'écarte sans se perdre. Il est même fait des larmes des longues séparations à condition que viennent les retrouvailles.
Timothée de Fombelle
Be happy without picking flaws.
Victor Hugo