Quotes by French Authors - Page 4

We are oftener treacherous through weakness than through calculation.
La Rochefoucauld
I never sleep in comfort save when I am hearing a sermon or praying to God.
François Rabelais
Riches do not consist in the possession of treasures but in the use made of them.
Napoléon Bonaparte
To arms! to arms! ye brave! The avenging sword unsheathe March on! march on! all hearts resolved On victory or death!
Rouget de Lisle
Hang yourself brave Crillon. We fought at Arques and you were not there.
Henry IV
Vice stirs up war virtue fights.
Vauvenargues
War is the national industry of Prussia.
Mirabeau
If they want peace nations should avoid the pinpricks that precede cannon shots.
Napoléon Bonaparte
A war regarded as inevitable or even probable and therefore much prepared for has a very good chance of eventually being fought.
Anaïs Nin
When the rich wage war it's the poor who die.
Jean-Paul Sartre
War is much too important a matter to be left to the generals.
Georges Clémenceau
War is a series of catastrophes which result in victory.
Georges Clémenceau
Virtue often trips and falls on the sharp-edged rock of poverty.
Eugene Sue
Our virtues are most frequently but vices disguised.
La Rochefoucauld
If virtue were its own reward it would no longer be a human quality but supernatural.
Vauvenargues
I prefer an accommodation vice to an obstinate virtue.
Molière
I know myself too well to believe in pure virtue.
Albert Camus
Violence is just where kindness is vain.
Corneille
There are few chaste women who are not tired of their trade.
La Rochefoucauld
There are some defeats more triumphant than victories.
Michel Montaigne
Everyone has his faults which he continually repeats neither fear nor shame can cure them.
Jean de La Fontaine
Laziness is nothing more than the habit of resting before you get tired.
Jules Renard
As for an authentic villain the real thing the absolute the artist one rarely meets him even once in a lifetime. The ordinary bad hat is always in part a decent fellow.
Colette
When our vices leave us we flatter ourselves with the credit of having left them.
La Rochefoucauld
When I religiously confess myself to myself I find that the best virtue I have has in it some tincture of vice.
Michel de Montaigne
It's true Heaven forbids some pleasures but a compromise can usually be found.
Molière
Sadness is a state of sin.
André Gide
All mankind's unhappiness derives from one thing: his inability to know how to remain in repose in one room.
Blaise Pascal
All for one one for all.
Alexander Dumas
Those who are unhappy have no need for anything in this world but people capable of giving them their attention.
Simone Weil
Unhappiness indicates wrong thinking just as ill health indicates a bad regimen.
Paul Bourget
By becoming more unhappy we sometimes learn how to be less so.
Madame Swetchine
We call first truths those we discover after all the others.
Albert Camus
There are truths that are not for all men nor for all times.
Voltaire
I speak the truth not so much as I would but as much as I dare and I dare a little more as I grow older.
Michel de Montaigne
Truth exists. Only lies are invented.
Georges Braque
The greatest happiness in life is the conviction that we are loved - loved for ourselves or rather loved in spite of ourselves.
Victor Hugo
True love begins when nothing is looked for in return.
Antoine De Saint Exupery
True love is like ghosts which everybody talks about and few have seen.
François de La Rochefoucauld
True love is eternal infinite and always like itself. It is equal and pure without violent demonstrations: it is seen with white hairs and is always young in the heart.
Honoré de Balzac
For the maintenance of peace nations should avoid the pin-pricks which forerun cannon-shots.
Napoleon
The more I see of other countries the more I love my own.
Mme. De Stael
If one had but a single glance to give the world one should gaze on Istanbul.
Alphonse de Lamartine
Toleration is the best religion.
Victor Hugo
It is intolerance to speak of toleration. Away with the word from the dictionary!
Mirabeau
There are very few human beings who receive the truth complete and staggering by instant illumination. Most of them acquire it fragment by fragment on a small scale by successive developments cellularly like a laborious mosaic.
Anaïs Nin
If after all men cannot always make history have a meaning they can always act so that their own lives have one.
Albert Camus
God requires a faithful fulfillment of the merest trifle given us to do rather than the most ardent aspiration to things to which we are not called.
Saint Francis de Sales
Nothing can be done except little by little.
Charles Baudelaire
Life is denied by lack of attention whether it be to cleaning windows or trying to write a masterpiece.
Nadia Boulanger
What saves a man is to take a step. Then another step.
Antoine De Saint Exupery
One sits down first one thinks afterwards.
Jean Cocteau
Time is a great teacher but unfortunately it kills all its pupils.
Hector Berlioz
3 o'clock is always too late or too early for anything you want to do.
Jean-Paul Sartre
Great thoughts come from the heart.
Vauvenargues
Every age can be enchanting provided you live within it.
Brigitte Bardot
I think therefore I am.
René Descartes
God speaks to all individuals through what happens to them moment by moment.
J. P. DeCaussade
I always say to myself what is the most important thing we can think about at this extraordinary moment.
François de La Rochefoucauld
The present moment is creative creating with an unheard-of intensity.
Le Corbusier