Quotes by French Authors - Page 16

A nation is a body of people who have done great things together.
Ernest Renan
By time and toil we sever What strength and rage could never.
Jean de La Fontaine
Patience is the art of hoping.
Vauvenargues
Life on the farm is a school of patience you can't hurry the crops or make an ox in two days.
Henri Fournier Alain
Patience and passage of time do more than strength and fury.
Jean de La Fontaine
Never cut what you can untie.
Joseph Joubert
Have patience with all things but chiefly have patience with yourself. Do not lose courage in considering your own imperfections but instantly set about remedying them - every day begin the task anew.
St. Francis de Sales
I have loved to the point of madness that which is called madness that which to me is the only sensible way to love.
Françoise Sagan
The present contains nothing more than the past and what is found in the effect was already in the cause.
Henri Bergson
Passion is universal humanity. Without it religion history romance and art would be useless.
Honoré de Balzac
The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of.
Blaise Pascal
The logic of the heart is absurd.
Julie de Lespinasse
Weak people cannot be sincere.
La Rochefoucauld
An intense feeling carries with it its own universe magnificent or wretched as the case may be.
Albert Camus
There is no passion like that of a functionary for his function.
Georges Clémenceau
If we resist our passions it is more due to their weakness than to our strength.
La Rochefoucauld
A mother who is really a mother is never free.
Honoré de Balzac
If we could but paint with the hand as we see with the eye!
Honoré de Balzac
A painter who has the feel of breasts and buttocks is saved.
Auguste Renoir
For me painting is a way to forget life. It is a cry in the night a strangled laugh.
Georges Rouault
I hope with all my heart there will be painting in heaven.
Jean Baptiste Corot
All colours are the friends of their neighbours and the lovers of their opposites.
Marc Chagall
There is nothing more difficult for a truly creative painter than to paint a rose because before he can do so he has first to forget all the roses that were ever painted.
Henri Matisse
A great philosophy is not a philosophy without reproach it is philosophy without fear.
Charles Péguy
Those who love to be feared fear to be loved. Some fear them but they fear everyone.
Jean Pierre Camus
Nothing is more despicable than respect based on fear.
Albert Camus
I am not afraid. ... I was born to do this.
Joan of Arc
Fear could never make a virtue.
Voltaire
To hell with pleasure that's haunted by fear!
Jean de La Fontaine
True love grows by sacrifice and the more thoroughly the soul rejects natural satisfaction the stronger and more detached its tenderness becomes.
Therese of Lisieux
Friendship which is of its nature a delicate thing fastidious slow of growth is easily checked will hesitate demur recoil where love good old blustering love bowls ahead and blunders through every obstacle.
Colette
Envy is the most stupid of vices for there is no single advantage to be gained from it.
Honoré de Balzac
In jealousy there is more of self-love than love.
François de La Rochefoucauld
I look at what I have not and think myself unhappy others look at what I have and think me happy.
Joseph Roux
If we only wanted to be happy it would be easy but we want to be happier than other people which is almost always difficult since we think them happier than they are.
Charles de Montesquieu
The only real elegance is in the mind if you've got that the rest really comes from it.
Diana Vreeland
It is quite wrong to think of old age as a downward slope. On the contrary one climbs higher and higher with the advancing years and that too with surprising strides.
George Sand
Youth is something very new: twenty years ago no one mentioned it.
Coco Chanel
Ambition having reached the summit longs to descend.
Pierre Corneille
I have been very happy very rich very beautiful much adulated very famous and very unhappy.
Brigitte Bardot
On the outside one is a star. But in reality one is completely alone doubting everything. To experience this loneliness of soul is the hardest thing in the world.
Brigitte Bardot
Great and small suffer the same mishaps.
Blaise Pascal
Before we set our hearts too much upon anything let us examine how happy they are who already possess it.
François de La Rochefoucauld
Life is a hospital in which every patient is possessed by the desire of changing his bed. One would prefer to suffer near the fire and another is certain he would get well if he were by the window.
Charles Baudelaire
We always long for forbidden things k and desire what is denied us.
François Rabelais
Let us accept truth even when it surprises us and alters our views.
George Sand
Diogenes was asked what wine he liked best and he answered "Somebody else's."
Michel de Montaigne
I invent nothing. I rediscover.
Auguste Rodin
Originality is nothing but judicious imitation. The most original writers borrowed one from another. The instruction we find in books is like fire. We fetch it from our neighbours kindle it at home communicate it to others and it becomes the property of all.
Voltaire
What the orators want in depth they give you in length.
Charles Montesquieu
There is no course of life so weak and sottish as that which is managed by order method and discipline.
Michel de Montaigne
My pessimism goes to the point of suspecting the sincerity of the pessimists.
Jean Rostand
In the midst of winter I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer.
Albert Camus
Do not suppose opportunity will knock twice at your door.
Sebastien Chamfort
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