Quotes by French Authors - Page 29

Necessity relieves us from the embarrassment of choice.
Vauvenargues
You can only predict things after they've happened.
Eugène Ionesco
The mania of thinking renders one unfit for every activity.
Anatole France
It is always thus impaled by a state of mind which is destined not to last that we make our irrevocable decisions.
Marcel Proust
In each action we must look beyond the action at our past present and future state and at others whom it affects and see the relation of all those things. And then we shall be very cautious.
Blaise Pascal
Life is the sum of all your choices.
Albert Camus
It is double pleasure to deceive the deceiver.
Jean de La Fontaine
One is easily fooled by that which one loves.
Molière
I am going to seek a great Perhaps.
Frangois Rabelais
Oh death you can wait keep your distance.
Andre Chenier
One should be ever booted and spurred and ready to depart.
Michel de Montaigne
When a man dies he does not just die of the disease he has: he dies of his whole life.
Charles Péguy
Rather suffer than die is man's motto.
Jean de La Fontaine
We triumph without glory when we conquer without danger.
Corneille
The good critic is he who narrates the adventures of his soul among masterpieces.
Anatole France
Vilify! Vilify! Some of it will always stick.
Pierre Beaumarchais
I had rather be hissed for a good verse than applauded for a bad one.
Victor Hugo
Faced with crisis the man of character falls back on himself.
Charles de Gaulle
One crime is everything two nothing.
Dorothee Deluzy
Poetry is the language of a state of crisis.
Stéphane Mallarmé
And the thing has been said and said well have no scruple. Take it and copy it.
Anatole France
It is fairly obvious that those who are in favour of the death penalty have more affinity with assassins than those who are not.
Rémy de Gourmont
Fear succeeds crime - it is its punishment.
Voltaire
Crime like virtue has its degrees.
Racine
There is no greater joy than that of feeling oneself a creator. The triumph of life is expressed by creation.
Henri Bergson
What another would have done as well as you do not do it. What another would have said as well as you do not say it. What another would have written as well do not write it. Be faithful to that which exists nowhere but in yourself- and thus make yourself indispensable.
André Gide
Style is a simple way of saying complicated things.
Jean Cocteau
Originality is nothing but judicious imitation.
Voltaire
The world embarrasses me and I cannot dream That this watch exists and has no watchmaker.
Voltaire
One must be thrust out of a finished cycle in life and that leap is the most difficult to make-to part with one's faith one's love when one would prefer to renew the faith and recreate the passion.
Anaïs Nin
Without imagination nothing is dangerous.
Georgette Leblanc
To change skins evolve into new cycles I feel one has to learn to discard. If one changes internally one should not continue to live with the same objects. They reflect one's mind and psyche of yesterday. I throw away what has no dynamic living use.
Anaïs Nin
All changes even the most longed for have their melancholy for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves we must die to one life before we can enter into another.
Anatole France
The spectacle has changed but our eyes remain the same.
Joseph Joubert
The more things change the more they remain the same.
Alphonse Karr
Any truth creates a scandal.
Marguerite Yourcenar
Those who never retract their opinions love themselves more than they love truth.
Joseph Joubert
Obstinacy and heat in sticking to one's opinions is the surest proof of stupidity. Is there anything so cocksure so immovable so disdainful so contemplative so solemn and serious as an ass?
Michel de Montaigne
Oh would that my mind could let fall its dead ideas as the tree does its withered leaves!
André Gide
Contradiction is not a sign of falsity nor the lack of contradiction a sign of truth.
Blaise Pascal
Consistency is only suitable for ridicule.
Molière
All our final resolutions are made in a state of mind which is not going to last.
Marcel Proust
If anyone accuses me of contradicting myself I reply: Because I have been wrong once or oftener I do not aspire to be always wrong.
Vauvenargues
Innovation! One cannot be forever innovating. I want to create classics.
Coco Chanel
Those interested in perpetuating present conditions are always in tears about the marvelous past that is about to disappear without having so much as a smile for the young future.
Simone de Beauvoir
The important thing is this: to be able at any moment to sacrifice what we are for what we could become.
Charles Du Bos
Unless one says goodbye to what one loves and unless one travels to completely new territories one can expect merely a long wearing away of oneself and an eventual extinction.
Jean Dubuffet
One must change one's tactics every ten years if one wishes to maintain one's superiority.
Napoléon Bonaparte
In a free country there is much clamor with little suffering in a despotic state there is little complaint with much grievance.
Lazare Carnot
A cowardly act! What do I care about that? You may be sure that I should never fear to commit one if it were to my advantage.
Napoleon
Sorrow is a fruit. God does not allow it to grow on a branch that is too weak to bear it.
Victor Hugo
Act and God will act.
Joan of Arc
Until the day of his death no man can be sure of his courage.
Jean Anouilh
Among wellborn spirits courage does not depend on age.
Pierre Corneille
Courage is a virtue only so far as it is directed by prudence.
Francois de Fenelon
Courage is as often the outcome of despair as of hope in the one case we have nothing to lose in the other everything to gain.
Diane de Poitiers
He who knows how to suffer everything can dare everything.
Vauvenargues
Courage is sustained by calling up anew the vision of the goal.
A. G. Sertillanges
Perfect courage means doing unwitnessed what we would be capable of with the world looking on.
François de La Rochefoucauld
Courage is like love it must have hope for nourishment.
Napoléon Bonaparte