Quotes by French Authors - Page 20

But what is happiness except the simple harmony between a man and the life he leads.
Albert Camus
Before strongly desiring anything we should look carefully into the happiness of its present owner.
La Rochefoucauld
The highest wisdom is continual cheerfulness such a state like the region above the moon is always clear and serene.
Michel de Montaigne
One thing I know the only ones among you who will be really happy are those who will have sought and found how to serve.
Albert Schweitzer
Life is a tragedy for those who feel and a comedy for those who think.
Jean de La Bruyère
We come and we cry and that is life we yawn and we depart and that is death!
Ausone de Chancel
Age does not protect you from love. But love to some extent protects you from age.
Jeanne Moreau
It is a misery to be born a pain to live a trouble to die.
St. Bernard of Clairvaux
What I cannot love I overlook.
Anaïs Nin
There can be no peace of mind in love since the advantage one has secured is never anything by a fresh starting-point for further desires.
Marcel Proust
There is only one happiness in life: to love and be loved.
George Sand
Life in common among people who love each other is the ideal of happiness.
George Sand
Love is a canvas furnished by nature and embroidered by imagination.
Voltaire
Love . . . includes fellowship in suffering in joy and in effort.
Albert Schweitzer
Oh how daily life is. (Ah que la vie est quotidienne.)
Jules Laforgue
One must choose in life between boredom and suffering.
Madame de Stael
There is time for work. And time for love. That leaves no other time.
Coco Chanel
Life begins on the other side of despair.
Jean-Paul Sartre
A single event can awaken within us a stranger totally unknown to us. To live is to be slowly born.
Antoine De Saint Exupery
One returns to the place one came from.
Jean de La Fontaine
He who despairs of the human condition is a coward but he who has hope for it is a fool.
Albert Camus
We never live but we are always in the expectation of living.
Voltaire
If there is a sin against life it consists perhaps not so much in despairing of life as in hoping for another and in eluding the implacable grandeur of this life.
Albert Camus
Without duty life is soft and boneless it cannot hold itself together.
Joseph Joubert
The flower is the poetry of reproduction. It is the example of the eternal seductiveness of life.
Jean Giraudoux
Man arrives as a novice at each age of his life.
Sebastien Chamfort
Once freedom lights its beacon in a man's heart the gods are powerless against him.
Jean-Paul Sartre
Freedom is what you do with what's been done to you.
Jean-Paul Sartre
Liberty is the right to do what the law permits.
Baron de Montesquieu
The tree of liberty grows only when watered by the blood of tyrants.
Bertrand Barere
Liberality consists less in giving much than in giving at the right moment.
Jean de La Bruyère
I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter.
Pascal
All men are born truthful and die liars.
Vauvenargues
The slave begins by demanding justice and ends by wanting to wear a crown. He must dominate in his turn.
Albert Camus
A chief is a man who assumes responsibility. He says 'I was beaten' he does not say 'My men were beaten.'
Antoine De Saint Exupery
A true leader always keeps an element of surprise up his sleeve which others cannot grasp but which keeps his public excited and breathless.
Charles de Gaulle
Every man of action has a strong dose of egotism pride hardness and cunning. But all those things will be forgiven him indeed they will be regarded as high qualities if he can make them the means to achieve great ends.
Charles de Gaulle
If I advance follow me! If I retreat kill me! If I die avenge me!
La Rochefoucauld
A leader is a dealer in hope.
Napoléon Bonaparte
I've got to follow them - I am their leader.
Alexandre Ledru-Rollin
Failure is not our only punishment for laziness: there is also the success of others.
Jules Renard
Nothing is more difficult and therefore more precious than to be able to decide.
Napoléon Bonaparte
There are two levers for moving men - interest and fear.
Napoléon Bonaparte
The lazy are always wanting to do something.
Vauvenargues
There is no man so good who were he to submit all his thoughts and actions to the laws would not deserve hanging ten times in his life.
Michel Montaigne
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
Whatever is enforced by command is more imputed to him who exacts than to him who performs.
Michel de Montaigne
To provoke laughter without joining in it greatly heightens the effect.
Honoré de Balzac
I hasten to laugh at everything for fear of being obliged to weep.
Pierre Beaumarchais
Then I began to think that it is very true which is commonly said that the one-half of the world knoweth not how the other half liveth.
François Rabelais
As we acquire more knowledge things do not become more comprehensible but more mysterious.
Albert Schweitzer
Every newspaper editor owes tribute to the devil.
Jean de La Fontaine
I fear three newspapers more than a hundred thousand bayonets.
Napoleon
In jealousy there is more self-love than love.
La Rochefoucauld
Jealousy is an awkward homage which inferiority renders to merit.
Mme. De Puisieux
Guard within yourself that treasure kindness. Know how to give without hesitation how to lose without regret how to acquire without meanness know how to replace in your heart by the happiness of those you love the happiness that may be wanting to yourself.
George Sand
Love is above all else the gift of oneself.
Jean Anouilh
The intelligent man who is proud of his intelligence is like the condemned man who is proud of his large cell.
Simone Weil
An intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself.
Albert Camus
The intellect is always fooled by the heart.
La Rochefoucauld