Quotes by French Authors - Page 24

The perfection preached in the Gospels never yet built up an Empire. Every man of action has a strong dose of optimism pride hardness and cunning. But all these things will be forgiven him indeed they will be regarded as high qualities if he can make of them the means to achieve great ends.
Charles de Gaulle
The highest and most lofty trees have the most reason to dread the thunder.
Charles Rollin
A great secret of success is to go through life as a man who never gets used up.
Albert Schweitzer
Everything great in the world comes from neurotics. They alone have founded our religions and composed our masterpieces. Never will the world know all it owes to them nor all they have suffered to enrich us.
Marcel Proust
The gratitude of most men is but a secret desire of receiving greater benefits.
La Rochefoucauld
He who receives a good turn should never forget it he who does one should never remember it.
Pierre Charron
How can you govern a country with two hundred and forty-six varieties of cheese?
Charles de Gaulle
The art of governing consists in not letting men grow old in their jobs.
Napoléon Bonaparte
The art of putting the right men in the right places is first in the science of government but that of finding places for the discontented is the most difficult.
Talleyrand
Republics are brought to their ends by luxury monarchies by poverty.
Baron de Montesquieu
Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.
Honoré de Balzac
To govern is to choose.
Pierre Mendes-France
The majority is the best way because it is visible and has strength to make itself obeyed. Yet it is the opinion of the least able.
Blaise Pascal
The weak have one weapon - the errors of those who think they are strong.
Georges Bidault
It is the aim of good government to stimulate production of bad government to encourage consumption.
Jean Baptiste Say
The best government is a benevolent tyranny tempered by an occasional assassination.
Voltaire
Tyranny is always better organized than freedom.
Charles Péguy
No man deserves to be praised for his goodness unless he has the strength of character to be wicked. All other goodness is generally nothing but indolence or impotence of will.
La Rochefoucauld
Generosity is the vanity of giving.
La Rochefoucauld
There are bad people who would be less dangerous if they were quite devoid of goodness.
La Rochefoucauld
For an inheritance to be really great the hand of the defunct must not be seen.
René Char
I expect to pass though this world but once. Any good therefore that I can do or any kindness that I can show to my fellow-creature let me do it now. Let me not defer or neglect it for I shall not pass this way again.
Stephen Grellet
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 de Montaigne
I need nothing but God and to lose myself in the heart of God.
Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque
To love one that is great is almost to be great one's self.
Madame Necker
The Blessed Virgin used me like a broom and then put me back in my place.
Bernadette Soubirous
God speaks to all individuals through what happens to them moment by moment.
J. P. DeCaussade
Jesus makes the bitterest mouthful taste sweet.
Therese of Lisieux
God that dumping ground of our dreams.
Jean Rostand
The most beautiful of all emblems is that of God whom Timaeus of Locris describes under the image of "A circle whose centre is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere."
Voltaire
If triangles had a God he would have three sides.
Baron de Montesquieu
I believe in the incomprehensibility of God.
Honoré de Balzac
If God did not exist it would be necessary to invent him.
Voltaire
If God made us in his image we have certainly returned the compliment.
Voltaire
Every man thinks God is on his side. The rich and powerful know he is.
Jean Anouilh
I am afraid I shall not find Him but I shall still look for Him. If He exists He may be appreciative of my efforts.
Jules Renard
God is usually on the side of big squadrons and against little ones.
Roger de Bussy-Rabutin
God is a circle whose centre is everywhere and circumference nowhere.
Voltaire
Without duty life is soft and boneless.
Joseph Joubert
I was born to be a remarkable woman it matters little in what way or how. ... I shall be famous or I will die.
Marie Bashkirtseff
The most absurd and reckless aspirations have sometimes led to extraordinary success.
Vauvenargues
Each time I leaped I seemed to touch the sky and when I regained earth it seemed to be mine alone.
Josephine Baker
One should want only one thing and want it constantly. Then one is sure of getting it. But I desire everything and consequently get nothing.
André Gide
Pleasure is the object duty and the goal of all rational creatures.
Voltaire
People can have many different kinds of pleasure. The real one is that for which they will forsake the others.
Marcel Proust
He who wants to do everything will never do anything.
André Maurois
You can't assume the responsibility for everything you do-or don't do.
Simone de Beauvoir
Where no plan is laid where the disposal of time is surrendered merely to the chance of incident chaos will soon reign.
Victor Hugo
Life has a meaning only if one barters it day by day for something other than itself.
Antoine De Saint Exupery
The soul that has no established aim loses itself.
Michel de Montaigne
The great and glorious masterpiece of man is how to live with a purpose.
Michel de Montaigne
No wind serves him who addresses his voyage to no certain port.
Michel de Montaigne
A straight path never leads anywhere except to the objective.
André Gide
In everything one must consider the end.
Jean de La Fontaine
The great and glorious masterpiece of man is to know how to live to purpose.
Michel de Montaigne
Ambition is pitiless. Any merit that it cannot use it finds despicable.
Joseph Joubert
Before we set our hearts too much upon anything let us examine how happy they are who already possess it.
La Rochefoucauld
Do not wish to be anything but what you are and try to be that perfectly.
St. Francis de Sales
If there were no God it would be necessary to invent him.
Voltaire
The only thing to know is how to use your neuroses.
Arthur Adamov