Quotes by French Authors - Page 27

A pious man is one who would be an atheist if the king were.
Jean de La Bruyère
Nothing is so hideous as an obsolete fashion.
Stendhal
There is little less trouble in governing a private family than a whole kingdom.
Michel Montaigne
Sometimes our light goes out but is blown into flame by another human being. Each of us owes deepest thanks to those who have rekindled this light.
Albert Schweitzer
So like a forgotten fire a childhood can always flare up again within us.
Gaston Bachelard
There are fathers who do not love their children there is no grandfather who does not adore his grandson.
Victor Hugo
What a heavy burden is a name that has become too famous.
Voltaire
Before such a prodigious career judgement is torn between blame and admiration.
Charles de Gaulle
All celebrated people lose dignity on a close view.
Napoléon Bonaparte
All the fame I look for in life is to have lived it quietly.
Michel de Montaigne
The ordinary man casts a shadow in a way we do not quite understand. The man of genius casts light.
George Steiner
Glory is fleeting but obscurity is forever.
Napoléon Bonaparte
Faith is a gift of God.
Blaise Pascal
Tell me who admires and loves you and I will tell you who you are.
Charles-Augustin Sainte-Beuve
Faith assuages guides restores.
Arthur Rimbaud
Faith is a knowledge of the benevolence of God toward us and a certain persuasion of His veracity.
John Calvin
Faith is the little night-light that burns in a sick-room as long as it is there the obscurity is not complete we turn towards it and await the daylight.
Abbe Henri Huvelin
Faith is a theological virtue that inclines the mind under the influence of the will and grace to yield firm assent to revealed truths because of the authority of God.
Adolphe Tanqueray
In prayer one must hold fast and never let go because the one who gives up loses all. If it seems that no one is listening to you then cry out even louder. If you are driven out of one door go back in by the other.
Jane Frances de Chantal
Can a faith that does nothing be called sincere?
Jean Racine
Loving is half of believing.
Victor Hugo
It is impossible on reasonable grounds to disbelieve miracles.
Blaise Pascal
Faith is a sounder guide than reason. Reason can go only so far but faith has no limits.
Blaise Pascal
It is the heart which experiences God and not the reason.
Blaise Pascal
If we were logical the future would be bleak indeed. But we are more than logical. We are human beings and we have faith and we have hope.
Jacques Cousteau
All the scholastic scaffolding falls as a ruined edifice before a single word: faith.
Napoléon Bonaparte
Faith is believing when it is beyond the power of reason to believe.
Voltaire
It is faith and not reason which impels men to action. ... Intelligence is content to point out the road but never drives us along it.
Dr. Alexis Carrel
Faith is an excitement and an enthusiasm a state of intellectual magnificence which we must not squander on our way through life.
George Sand
Faith consists not in ignorance but in knowledge and that not only of God but also of the divine will.
John Calvin
The country in which I live is not my native country that lies elsewhere and it must always be the center of my longings.
Therese of Lisieux
The great majority of men use their own short-sighted ideas as a yardstick for measuring the divine omnipotence.
Therese of Lisieux
One's life has value so long as one attributes value to the life of others by means of love friendship indignation and compassion.
Simone de Beauvoir
Trying to do good to people without God's help is no easier than making the sun shine at midnight. You discover that you've got to abandon all your own preferences your own bright ideas and guide souls along the road our Lord has marked out for them. You mustn't coerce them into some path of your own choosing.
Therese of Lisieux
Faith declares what the senses do not see but not the contrary of what they see.
Blaise Pascal
Losses are comparative imagination only makes them of any moment.
Blaise Pascal
Defeat is a thing of weariness of incoherence of boredom.
Antoine De Saint Exupery
Nothing is a waste of time if you use the experience wisely.
Auguste Rodin
Let us not be needlessly bitter certain failures are sometimes fruitful.
E. M. Cioran
Life is very interesting if you make mistakes.
Georges Carpentier
A man's life is interesting primarily when he has failed - I well know. For it's a sign that he tried to surpass himself.
Georges Clémenceau
There are defeats more triumphant than victories.
Michel de Montaigne
A chief is a man who assumes responsibility. He does not say "My men were beaten " he says "I was beaten."
Antoine De Saint Exupery
The man who can own up to his error is greater than he who merely knows how to avoid making it.
Cardinal de Retz
War is a series of catastrophes that results in victory.
Georges Clémenceau
The greatest general is he who makes the fewest mistakes.
Napoléon Bonaparte
The progress of rivers to the ocean is not so rapid as that of man to error.
Voltaire
Is there anyone so wise as to learn by the experience of others?
Voltaire
Experience is the name men give to their follies or their sorrows.
Alfred de Musset
Experience has two things to teach: The first is that we must correct a great deal the second that we must not correct too much.
Eugène Delacroix
All that I know I learned after I was thirty.
Georges Clémenceau
Evil often triumphs but never conquers.
Joseph Roux
Children have more need of models than of critics.
Joseph Joubert
Total absence of humor renders life impossible.
Colette
To jealousy nothing is more frightful than laughter.
Françoise Sagan
Humor is an affirmation of dignity a declaration of man's superiority to all that befalls him.
Romain Gary
Losses are comparative only imagination makes them of any moment.
Blaise Pascal
There are no accidents so unlucky from which clever people are not able to reap some advantage and none so lucky that the foolish are not able to turn them to their own disadvantage.
François de La Rochefoucauld
Riches like glory or health have no more beauty or pleasure than their possessor is pleased to lend them.
Michel de Montaigne
Let us not be needlessly bitter: certain failures are sometimes fruitful.
E. M. Cioran