Quotes by French Authors - Page 148

Grown-ups never understand anything by themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them
Antoine De Saint Exupery
Well, I must endure the presence of a few caterpillars if I wish to become acquainted with the butterflies.
Antoine De Saint Exupery
Man is the only creature who refuses to be what he is.
Albert Camus
A day without laughter is a day wasted.
Nicolas Chamfort
Fuck! Is one expected to be a gentleman when one is stiff?
Marquis de Sade
People often say that the English are very cold fish, very reserved, that they have a way of looking at things – even tragedy – with a sense of irony. There’s some truth in it; it’s pretty stupid of them, though. Humor won’t save you; it doesn’t really do anything at all. You can look at life ironically for years, maybe decades; there are people who seem to go through most of their lives seeing the funny side, but in the end, life always breaks your heart. Doesn’t matter how brave you are, how reserved, or how much you’ve developed a sense of humor, you still end up with your heart broken. That’s when you stop laughing. In the end there’s just the cold, the silence and the loneliness. In the end, there’s only death.
Michel Houellebecq
If he's getting married, he's not longer interesting.
Colette
The greater part of the world's troubles are due to questions of grammar.
Michel de Montaigne
How is it that little children are so intelligent and men so stupid? It must be education that does it
Alexandre Dumas
I had learned that you should always shout louder than your aggressor.
Marjane Satrapi
...There are too many idiots in this world. And having said it, I have the burden of proving it.
Frantz Fanon
It infuriates me to be wrong when I know I'm right.
Molière
I feel like getting married, or committing suicide, or subscribing to L'Illustration. Something desperate, you know.
Albert Camus
Mirrors should think longer before they reflect.
Jean Cocteau
Man is certainly stark mad; he cannot make a worm, and yet he will be making gods by dozens.
Michel de Montaigne
Writing is the only profession where no one considers you ridiculous if you earn no money.
Jules Renard
Why do people always expect authors to answer questions? I am an author because I want to ask questions. If I had answers, I'd be a politician.
Eugène Ionesco
Common sense is the most widely shared commodity in the world, for every man is convinced that he is well supplied with it.
René Descartes
I made this [letter] very long, because I did not have the leisure to make it shorter.
Blaise Pascal
If you're trapped in the dream of the Other, you're fucked.
Gilles Deleuze
Money may not buy happiness, but I'd rather cry in a Jaguar than on a bus.
Françoise Sagan
I have never voted in my life... I have always known and understood that the idiots are in a majority so it's certain they will win.
Louis-Ferdinand Céline
I have only made this letter longer because I have not had the time to make it shorter.", 1657)
Blaise Pascal
If something is going to happen to me, I want to be there.
Albert Camus
In life you'll meet a lot of jerks. If they hurt you, tell yourself that it's because they're stupid. That will help keep you from reacting to their cruelty. Because there is nothing worse than bitterness and vengeance... Always keep your dignity and be true to yourself.
Marjane Satrapi
A great nose may be an indexOf a great soul
Edmond Rostand
I quote others only in order the better to express myself.
Michel de Montaigne
I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: Oh Lord, make my enemies ridiculous. And God granted it.", May 16, 1767)
Voltaire
In politics, stupidity is not a handicap.
Napoléon Bonaparte
Sometimes, there is no harm in putting off a piece of work until another day.
Antoine De Saint Exupery
I looked about me. Luminous points glowed in the darkness. Cigarettes punctuated the humble meditations of worn old clerks. I heard them talking to one another in murmurs and whispers. They talked about illness, money, shabby domestic cares. And suddenly I had a vision of the face of destiny. Old bureaucrat, my comrade, it is not you who are to blame. No one ever helped you to escape. You, like a termite, built your peace by blocking up with cement every chink and cranny through which the light might pierce. You rolled yourself up into a ball in your genteel security, in routine, in the stifling conventions of provincial life, raising a modest rampart against the winds and the tides and the stars. You have chosen not to be perturbed by great problems, having trouble enough to forget your own fate as a man. You are not the dweller upon an errant planet and do not ask yourself questions to which there are no answers. Nobody grasped you by the shoulder while there was still time. Now the clay of which you were shaped has dried and hardened, and naught in you will ever awaken the sleeping musician, the poet, the astronomer that possibly inhabited you in the beginning.
Antoine De Saint Exupery
To accomplish great things, we must dream as well as act.
Anatole France
What a wonderful life I’ve had! I only wish I’d realized it sooner.
Colette
He who jumps into the void owes no explanation to those who stand and watch.
Jean-Luc Godard
To accomplish great things, we must not only act but also dream, not only plan, but also believe!
Anatole France
The personal life deeply lived always expands into truths beyond itself.
Anaïs Nin
It is in the knowledge of the genuine conditions of our lives that we must draw our strength to live and our reasons for living.
Simone de Beauvoir
At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person. Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us.
Albert Schweitzer
Inspiration comes of working every day.
Charles Baudelaire
Make visible what, without you, might perhaps never have been seen.
Robert Bresson
Each man should frame life so that at some future hour fact and his dreaming meet.
Victor Hugo
I want to be justice, love and the wrath of God all in one.
Marjane Satrapi
When we blindly adopt a religion, a political system, a literary dogma, we become automatons.
Anaïs Nin
There are people who have money and people who are rich.
Coco Chanel
You cannot stay on the summit forever; you have to come down again. So why bother in the first place? Just this: What is above knows what is below, but what is below does not know what is above. One climbs, one sees. One descends, one sees no longer, but one has seen. There is an art of conducting oneself in the lower regions by the memory of what one saw higher up. When one can no longer see, one can at least still know.
René Daumal
It`s not how old you are, it`s how you are old.
Jules Renard
I shut my eyes in order to see.
Paul Gauguin
The dream was always running ahead of me. To catch up, to live for a moment in unison, was the miracle.
Anaïs Nin
Living never wore one so much as the effort not to live.
Anaïs Nin
And the fox said to the little prince: men have forgotten this truth, but you must not forget it. You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed.
Antoine De Saint Exupery
There is only one day left, always starting over: It is given to us at dawn and taken away from us at dusk.
Jean-Paul Sartre
I am not afraid... I was born to do this.
Jeanne d'Arc
Perfect is the enemy of good.
Voltaire
I wonder,” he said, “whether the stars are set alight in heaven so that one day each one of us may find his own again...
Antoine De Saint Exupery
No one is ever satisfied where he is.
Antoine De Saint Exupery
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
life is truly known only to those who suffer, lose, endure adversity, & stumble from defeat to defeat.
Anaïs Nin
One life is all we have and we live it as we believe in living it. But to sacrifice what you are and to live without belief, that is a fate more terrible than dying.
Jeanne d'Arc
Life begins on the other side of despair.
Jean-Paul Sartre
What saves a man is to take a step. Then another step.
Antoine De Saint Exupery