Quotes by French Authors - Page 3

My life has been full of terrible misfortunes most of which never happened.
Michel de Montaigne
Needless fear and panic over disease or misfortune that seldom materialize are simply bad habits. By proper ventilation and illumination of the mind it is possible to cultivate tolerance poise and real courage.
Elie Metchnikoff
The expectation of an unpleasantness is more terrible than the thing itself.
Marie Bashkirtseff
Half the world does not know how the other half lives.
François Rabelais
Everything is for the best in this best of all possible worlds.
Voltaire
Believe everything you hear said of the world nothing is too impossibly bad.
Honoré de Balzac
There is no more dreadful punishment than futile and hopeless labor.
Albert Camus
There is a time for work. And a time for love. That leaves no other time.
Coco Chanel
One should stick to the sort of thing for which one was made I tried to be an herbalist whereas I should keep to the butcher's trade.
Jean de La Fontaine
Men take only their needs into consideration never their abilities.
Napoléon Bonaparte
When I can no longer create anything I'll be done for.
Coco Chanel
There is dignity in work only when it is work freely accepted.
Albert Camus
While I am busy with little things I am not required to do greater things.
St. Francis de Sales
Man's usual routine is to work and to dream and work and dream.
Raymond Queneau
Work banishes those three great evils boredom vice and poverty.
Voltaire
How many years of fatigue and punishment it takes to learn the simple truth that work that disagreeable thing is the only way of not suffering in life or at all events of suffering less.
Charles Baudelaire
Chance favours only those who know how to court her.
Charles Nicolle
Work is not man's punishment. It is his reward and his strength his glory and his pleasure.
George Sand
By the work one knows the workman.
Jean de La Fontaine
Hasten slowly and without losing heart put your work twenty times upon the anvil.
Nicolas Boileau
As a remedy against all ills - poverty sickness and melanchol - only one thing is absolutely necessary: a liking for work.
Charles Baudelaire
Everything considered work is less boring than amusing oneself.
Charles Baudelaire
True eloquence consists of saying all that should be not all that could be said.
La Rochefoucauld
Let it not be said that I have said nothing new. The arrangement of the material is new.
Blaise Pascal
Plain English - everybody loves it demands it - from the other fellow.
Jacques Barzun
A single word often betrays a great design.
Jean Baptiste Racine
Words like eyeglasses blur everything that they do not make clear.
Joseph Joubert
You (Pindar) who possessed the talent of speaking much without saying anything.
Voltaire
The word is half his that speaks and half his that hears it.
Michel de Montaigne
There is no such thing as a long piece of work except one that you dare not start.
Charles Baudelaire
The distance doesn't matter only the first step is difficult.
Madame Marquise du Deffand
It is easier for a woman to defend her virtue against men than her reputation against women.
Rochebrune
It is God who makes woman beautiful it is the devil who makes her pretty.
Victor Hugo
There are no ugly women there are only women who do not know how to look pretty.
Jean de La Bruyère
Most men who run down women are running down one woman only.
Rémy de Gourmont
Cbercbez lafemme. (Find the woman.)
Alexander Dumas
Women always have some mental reservation.
Louis Ferdinand Destouches
A woman is like your shadow follow her she flies fly from her she follows.
Sebastien Chamfort
Women are perfectly well aware that the more they seem to obey the more they rule.
Jules Michelet
One can find women who have never had a love affair but it is rare indeed to find any who have had only one.
La Rochefoucauld
Next to the wound what women make best is the bandage.
Barbey d'Aurevilly
The woman who thinks she is intelligent demands equal rights with men. A woman who is intelligent does not.
Colette
Nature says to a woman: 'Be beautiful if you can wise if you want to but be respected that is essential.'
Pierre Beaumarchais
One is not born a woman - one becomes one.
Simone de Beauvoir
Even the most respectable woman has a complete set of clothes in her wardrobe ready for a possible abduction.
Sacha Guitry
A woman never sees what we do for her she only sees what we don't do.
Georges Courteline
A kiss can be a comma a question mark or an exclamation point. That's a basic spelling that every woman should know.
Mistinguette
A man often runs the risk of throwing away a witticism if he admits that it is his own.
Jean de La Bruyère
What is perfectly true is perfectly witty.
La Rochefoucauld
Wit consists in knowing the resemblance of things which differ and the difference of things which are alike.
Madame de Stael
If you want to be witty work on your character and say what you think on every occasion.
Stendhal
I prefer the errors of enthusiasm to the indifference of wisdom.
Anatole France
It is easier to be wise for others than for ourselves.
La Rochefoucauld
All human wisdom is summed up in two words - wait and hope.
Alexandre Dumas
It is not wise to be wiser than is necessary.
Philippe Quinault
A wise man sees as much as he ought not as much as he can.
Michel de Montaigne
I gave my beauty and my youth to men. I am going to give my wisdom and experience to animals.
Brigitte Bardot
Those who live are those who fight.
Victor Hugo
All happiness depends on courage and work. I have had many periods of wretchedness but with energy and above all with illusions I pulled through them all.
Honoré de Balzac
If you start to take Vienna - take Vienna.
Napoléon Bonaparte