Quotes by French Authors - Page 30

Cowardice is the mother of cruelty.
Michel de Montaigne
Life is to be entered upon with courage.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage.
Anaïs Nin
To say yes you have to sweat and roll up your sleeves and plunge both hands into life up to the elbows. It is easy to say no even if saying no means death.
Jean Anouilh
I am not afraid of a fight I have to do my duty come what may.
Therese of Lisieux
I have often though morality may perhaps consist solely in the courage of making a choice.
Leon Blum
Valor is stability not of legs and arms but of courage and the soul.
Michel de Montaigne
Awakening begins when a man realizes that he is going nowhere and does not know where to go.
Georges Gurdjieff
Defending the truth is not something one does out of a sense of duty or to allay guilt complexes but is a reward in itself.
Simone de Beauvoir
If you suppress grief too much it can well redouble.
Molière
Every difficulty slurred over will be a ghost to disturb your repose later on.
Frédéric Chopin
There were always in me two women at least one woman desperate and bewildered who felt she was drowning and another who would leap into a scene as upon a stage conceal her true emotions because they were weaknesses helplessness despair and present to the world only a smile an eagerness curiosity enthusiasm interest.
Anaïs Nin
True miracles are created by men when they use the courage and intelligence that God gave them.
Jean Anouilh
With audacity one can undertake anything.
Napoléon Bonaparte
Audacity more audacity always audacity.
Georges Jacques Danton
Audacity has made kings.
Prosper Jolyot de Crebillion
Nothing but courage can guide life.
Vauvenargues
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.
Jean Dubuffet
As to moral courage I have very rarely met with the two o'clock in the morning kind. I mean unprepared courage that which is necessary on an unexpected occasion and which in spite of the most unforeseen events leaves full freedom of judgement and decision.
Napoléon Bonaparte
Courage! I have shown it for years think you I shall lose it at the moment when my sufferings are to end?
Marie Antoinette
The first virtue in a soldier is endurance of fatigue courage is only the second virtue.
Napoléon Bonaparte
The Ancient Mariner said to Neptune during a great storm 'O God you will save me if you wish but I am going to go on holding my tiller straight.'
Michel de Montaigne
Those who serve a cause are not those who love that cause. They are those who love the life which has to be led in order to serve it - except in the case of the very purest and they are rare.
Simone Weil
The discovery of a new dish does more for human happiness than the discovery of a new star.
Anthelme Brillat-Savarin
The less men think the more they talk.
Charles Montesquieu
I think that a society cannot live without a certain number of irrational beliefs. They are protected from criticism and analysis because they are irrational.
Claude Lévi-Strauss
I believe in the gods. Or rather I believe that I believe in the gods. But I don't believe that they are great brooding presences watching over us I believe they are completely absent-minded.
Jean Giraudoux
Conceit causes more conversation than wit.
La Rochefoucauld
Enjoy your own life without comparing it with that of another.
Marquis de Condorcet
Conscience is a sacred sanctuary where God alone may enter as judge.
Felicite Robert de Lamennais
Conscience reigns but it does not govern.
Paul Valéry
The effectiveness of work increases according to geometrical progression if there are no interruptions.
André Maurois
The confidence which we have in ourselves gives birth to much of that which we have in others.
La Rochefoucauld
A single idea if it is right saves us the labor of an infinity of experiences.
Jacques Maritain
The field of consciousness is tiny. It accepts only one problem at a time.
Antoine De Saint Exupery
So heavy is the chain of wedlock that it needs two to carry it and sometimes three.
Alexandre Dumas
Love does not consist in gazing at each other but in looking outward together in the same direction.
Antoine De Saint Exupery
Common sense is in spite of not the result of education.
Victor Hugo
A happy marriage is a long conversation which always seems too short.
André Maurois
Communism is the exploitation of the strong by the weak. In communism inequality springs from placing mediocrity on a level with excellence.
Proudhon
We're swallowed up only when we are willing for it to happen.
Nathalie Sarraute
If you start to take Vienna take Vienna.
Napoléon Bonaparte
Those who love a cause are those who love the life which has to be led in order to serve it.
Simone Weil
If you would civilize a man begin with his grandmother.
Victor Hugo
To be a man is to feel that one's own stone contributes to building the edifice of the world.
Antoine De Saint Exupery
We sit by and watch the barbarian. We tolerate him in the long stretches of peace we are not afraid. We are tickled by his irreverence his comic inversion of our old certitudes and our fixed creed refreshes us we laugh. But as we laugh we are watched by large and awful faces from beyond and on these faces there are no smiles.
Hilaire Belloc
How can you be expected to govern a country that has 246 kinds of cheese?
Charles de Gaulle
I desire no other evidence of the truth to Christianity than the Lord's Prayer.
Mme. De Stael
Alexander Caesar Charlemagne and I myself have founded empires but upon what do these creations of our genius depend? Upon force. Jesus alone founded His empire upon love and to this very day millions would die for Him.
Napoleon
Christianity ruined emperors but saved peoples.
Alfred de Musset
Childhood - a period of waiting for the moment when I could send everyone and everything connected with it to hell.
Igor Stravinsky
The clearest sign of wisdom is continued cheerfulness.
Michel de Montaigne
As the purse is emptied the heart is filled.
Victor Hugo
Every man has three characters - that which he exhibits that which he has and that which he thinks he has.
Alphonse Karr
Charm is a way of getting the answer yes without having asked any clear question.
Albert Camus
Moderation is an ostentatious proof of our strength of character.
La Rochefoucauld
One can acquire everything in solitude except character.
Stendhal
We only become what we are by the radical and deep-seeded refusal of that which others have made of us.
Jean-Paul Sartre
We do not succeed in changing things according to our desire but gradually our desire changes.
Marcel Proust
The absurd man is he who never changes.
Auguste Barthelemy