Quotes by French Authors - Page 25

Action makes more fortunes than caution.
Vauvenargues
It is in your act that you exist not in your body. Your act is yourself and there is no other you.
Antoine De Saint Exupery
If you wait for the perfect moment when all is safe and assured it may never arrive. Mountains will not be climbed races won or lasting happiness achieved.
Maurice Chevalier
We don't have enough time to premeditate all our actions.
Vauvenargues
A thought which does not result in an action is nothing much and an action which does not proceed from a thought is nothing at all.
Georges Bernanos
Contemplation often makes life miserable. We should act more think less and stop watching ourselves live.
Nicolas de Chamfort
Men are alike in their promises. It is only in their deeds that they differ.
Molière
Shun idleness. It is a rust that attaches itself to the most brilliant metals.
Voltaire
Untilled ground however rich will bring forth thistles and thorns so also the mind of man.
Therese of Lisieux
The only menace is inertia.
Saint John Perse
Psychology is action not thinking about oneself.
Albert Camus
Change your life today. Don't gamble on the future act now without delay.
Simone de Beauvoir
In putting off what one has to do one runs the risk of never being able to do it.
Charles Baudelaire
Genius is a promontory jutting out of the infinite.
Victor Hugo
Too often we forget that genius ... depends upon the data within its reach that Archimedes could not have devised Edison's inventions.
Ernest Dimnet
It takes immense genius to represent simply and sincerely what we see in front of us.
Edmond Duranty
Great friendship is never without anxiety.
Marie de Rabutin-Chantal
I have always differentiated between two types of friends those who want proofs of friendship and those who do not. One kind loves me for myself and the others for themselves.
Gérard de Nerval
If you press me to say why I loved him I can say no more than because he was he and I was I.
Michel de Montaigne
Friendship is only a reciprocal conciliation of interests.
François de La Rochefoucauld
Seek those who find your road agreeable your personality and mind stimulating your philosophy acceptable and your experiences helpful. Let those who do not seek their own kind.
Jean-Henri Fabre
A true friend is the greatest of all blessings and that which we take the least care of all to acquire.
François de La Rochefoucauld
What causes us to like new acquaintances is not so much weariness of our old ones or the pleasure of change as disgust at not being sufficiently admired by those who know us too well and the hope of being admired more by those who do not know so much about us.
François de La Rochefoucauld
I cannot concentrate all my friendship on any single one of my friends because no one is complete enough in himself.
Anaïs Nin
If we all told what we know of one another there would not be four friends in the world
Blaise Pascal
Don't believe your friends when they ask you to be honest with them. All they really want is to be maintained in the good opinion they have of themselves.
Albert Camus
Only friends will tell you the truths you need to hear to make ... your life bearable.
Francine du Plessix Gray
What a wonderful thing it is to have a good friend. He identifies your innermost desires and spares you the embarrassment of disclosing them to him yourself.
Jean de La Fontaine
The more we love our friends the less we flatter them it is by excusing nothing that pure love shows itself.
Molière
Friendship admits of difference of character as love does that of sex.
Joseph Roux
It is more shameful to distrust our friends than to be deceived by them.
François de La Rochefoucauld
Two persons cannot long be friends if they cannot forgive each other's little failings.
Jean de La Bruyère
When my friends lack an eye I look at them in profile.
Joseph Joubert
Friendship requires great communication.
Saint Francis de Sales
Nothing wounds a friend like a want of confidence.
Jean Baptiste LaCordaire
It is not the services we render them but the services they render us that attaches people to us.
Labiche et Martin
A quarrel between friends when made up adds a new tie to friendship as ... the callosity formed 'round a broken bone makes it stronger than before.
Saint Francis de Sales
[Families] are made to make you forget yourself occasionally so that the beautiful balance of life is not destroyed.
Anaïs Nin
Each friend represents a world in us a world possibly not born until they arrive and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.
Anaïs Nin
Man is a knot a web a mesh into which relationships are tied. Only those relationships matter.
Antoine De Saint Exupery
There's nothing worth the wear of winning but laughter and the love of friends.
Hilaire Belloc
Oh Dear! How unfortunate I am not to have anyone to weep with!
Marie de Rabutin-Chantal
We call that person who has lost his father an orphan and a widower that man who has lost his wife. But that man who has known that immense unhappiness of losing a friend by what name do we call him? Here every language holds its peace in impotence.
Joseph Roux
There is no hope or joy except in human relations.
Antoine De Saint Exupery
There are moments in life when all that we can bear is the sense that our friend is near us our wounds would wince at consoling words that would reveal the depths of our pain.
Honoré de Balzac
True friendship is never serene.
Marie de Rabutin-Chantal
God same me from my friends I can protect myself from my enemies.
Marshal de Villars
Friends are like melons. Shall I tell you why? To find one good you must a hundred try.
Claude Mermet
Chance makes our parents but choice makes our friends.
Jacques Delille
The best way to keep your friends is to never owe them anything and never lend them anything.
Paul de Kock
When we hurt each other we should write it down in the sand so the winds of forgiveness can make it go away for good. When we help each other we should chisel it in stone lest we never forget the love of a friend.
Christian H. Godefroy
What men call friendship is no more than a partnership a mutual care of interests an exchange of favors - in a word it is a sort of traffic in which self-love ever proposes to be the gainer.
François de La Rochefoucauld
Prosperity makes few friends.
Vauvenargues
God save me from my friends - I can protect myself from my enemies.
Marshall de Villars
It is not enough to succeed a friend must fail.
La Rochefoucauld
If you press me to say why I loved him I can say no more than it was because he was he and I was 1.
Michel de Montaigne
Friends are relatives you make for yourself.
Eustache Deschamps
The presidency is temporary-but the family is permanent.
Yvonne de Gaulle
France always has plenty men of talent but it is always deficient in men of action and high character.
Napoleon
Ye sons of France awake to glory! Hark! Hark! what myriads bid you rise! Your children wives and grandsires hoary Behold their tears and hear their cries!
Rouget de Lisle