Quotes by French Authors - Page 44

We never know how strongly we cling to objects until they are taken away, and he who thinks htat he is attached to nothing, is frequently grandly mistaken, being bound to a thousand things, unknown to himself.
Jeanne Marie Bouvier de la Motte Guyon
The problem, however, is that I have yet to meet anyone, materialist or otherwise, who was able to dispense with value judgements. On the contrary, the literature of materialism is peculiarly marked by its wholesale profusion of denunciations of all sorts. Starting with Marx and Nietzsche, materialists have never been able to refrain from passing continuous moral judgement on all and sundry, which their whole philosophy might be expected to discourage them from doing.
Luc Ferry
I will say that the cross of materialism is that it never quite succeeds in believing what it preaches, in thinking its own thought. This may sound complicated, but is in fact simple: the materialist says, for example, that we are not free, though he is convinced, of course, that he asserts this freely, that no one is forcing him to state this view of the matter — neither parents, not social milieu, nor biological inheritance. He says that we are wholly determined by our history, but he never stops urging us to free ourselves, to change our destiny, to revolt where possible! He says that we must love the world as it is, turning our backs on past and future so as to live in the present, but he never stops trying, like you or me, when the present weighs upon us, to change it in hope of a better world. In brief, the materialist sets forth philosophical these that are profound, but always for you and me, never for himself. Always, he reintroduces transcendence — liberty, a vision for society, the ideal — because in truth he cannot not believe himself to be free, and therefore answerable to values higher than nature and history.
Luc Ferry
One should embrace the artist's profession only after recognising in oneself an intense passion for Nature and the disposition to pursue it with a perseverance that nothing can shatter - thirst for neither approval nor financial profit. Do not be discouraged by the censure that might fall upon one's works - one must be armoured with a strong conviction which makes one go straight ahead fearing no obstacle. An unremitting task […] an unassailable conscience. (From a sketchbook of 1847).
Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot
To love someone is to see a miracle invisible to others.
François Mauriac
Love works in miracles every day: such as weakening the strong, and strengthening the weak; making fools of the wise, and wise men of fools; favouring the passions, destroying reason, and in a word, turning everything topsy-turvy.
Marguerite de Valois
The history books which contain no lies are extremely tedious
Anatole France
A secret to which truth has always initiated her lovers, and through which they have learned that it is in hiding that she offers herself to them most truly.
Jacques Lacan
sometimes you will never know the value of a moment until it becomes a memory.
Georges Duhamel
If no one loved, the sun would go out.
Victor Hugo
ADIEUThe glimmer farther away than the head The heart-skip On the slope where the air rolls its voice The spokes of the wheel the sun in the rut At the crossroads near the embankment a prayer Some words that are not heard Nearer the sky And on its steps the last square of light("Adieu")
Pierre Reverdy
Like all magical mysteries, the secrets of the Great Work have a triple meaning: they are religious, philosophical and natural. Philosophical gold in religion is the Absolute and Supreme Reason; in philosophy, it is truth; in visible nature, it is the sun: in the subterranean and mineral world, it is the purest and most perfect gold. Hence the search after the Great Work is called the Search for the Absolute, and this work itself is termed the operation of the sun.
Éliphas Lévi
[Concerning] phosphorescent bodies, and in particular to uranium salts whose phosphorescence has a very brief duration. With the double sulfate of uranium and potassium ... I was able to perform the following experiment: One wraps a Lumière photographic plate with a bromide emulsion in two sheets of very thick black paper, such that the plate does not become clouded upon being exposed to the sun for a day. One places on the sheet of paper, on the outside, a slab of the phosphorescent substance, and one exposes the whole to the sun for several hours. When one then develops the photographic plate, one recognizes that the silhouette of the phosphorescent substance appears in black on the negative. If one places between the phosphorescent substance and the paper a piece of money or a metal screen pierced with a cut-out design, one sees the image of these objects appear on the negative. One can repeat the same experiments placing a thin pane of glass between the phosphorescent substance and the paper, which excludes the possibility of chemical action due to vapors which might emanate from the substance when heated by the sun's rays. One must conclude from these experiments that the phosphorescent substance in question emits rays which pass through the opaque paper and reduces silver
Henri Becquerel
After luncheon the sun, conscious that it was Saturday, would blaze an hour longer in the zenith,...
Marcel Proust
Everyone can get the gold of the Sun. (Tout le monde cueille - L'or du soleil)
Charles de Leusse
Water shines under the sun. But the sun dries it. (Eau brille sous soleil - Qui pourtant l’assèche.)
Charles de Leusse
The silverware shines if the sun. (L'argenterie brille - Si le soleil.
Charles de Leusse
The river overflows, not the sun. (Déborde le fleuve, - Pas le soleil)
Charles de Leusse
It was one of those bitter mornings when the whole of nature is shiny, brittle, and hard, like crystal. The trees, decked out in frost, seem to have sweated ice; the earth resounds beneath one's feet; the tiniest sounds carry a long way in the dry air; the blue sky is bright as a mirror, and the sun moves through space in icy brilliance, casting on the frozen world rays which bestow no warmth upon anything.
Guy de Maupassant
And of a Sunday swarm the folkUnder the honeysuckle vine, Quaffing, the while they talk and smoke, The sun, the melody, the wine.
Théophile Gautier
What a great thing, to be loved! What a greater thing still, to love! The heart becomes heroic though passion…if no one loved, the sun would go out.
Victor Hugo
It is more or less a given that nothing is less favorable to clairvoyance than the bright sun: physical light and mental light coexist on very poor terms.
André Breton
Look at the sun! It’s dry, it’s dead, it needs a drink, it wants blood! And I’ll give it blood!
Alfred de Musset
Right is just and true.
Victor Hugo
The prosperity of right is that it is always beautiful and pure.
Victor Hugo
This conflict between right and fact has endured since the origins of society. To bring the duel to an end, to consolidate the pure ideal with the human reality, to make the right peacefully interpenetrate the fact, and the fact the right, this is the work of the wise.
Victor Hugo
When everyone is against you, it means that you are absolutely wrong-- or absolutely right.
Albert Guinon
Oh, the fools, like a lot of good little schoolboys, scared to death of anything they've been taught is wrong!
Émile Zola
Treat your entire audience with the same level of care.
Cendrine Marrouat
Strategy is 5 percent thinking, 95 percent execution. And strategy execution is 5 percent technical, 95 percent people-related.
Professor Quy Huy INSEAD
The move is there, but you must see it.
Savielly Tartakower
A world without problems is an illusion, so is a world without solutions.
Gianni Sarcone
Illusion is the first of all pleasures.
Voltaire
At a great distance appeared with the same pomp the sheep of Thebes, the dog of Bubastis, the cat of Phoebe, the crocodile of Arsinoe, the goat of Mendes, and all the inferior gods of Egypt, who came to pay homage to the great ox, to the mighty Apis, as powerful as Isis, Osiris, and Horus, united together.In the midst of the demi-gods, forty priests carried an enormous basket, filled with sacred onions. These were, it is true, gods, but they resembled onions very much.("The White Bull")
Voltaire
Visions from the gods are gifts alone for those who wander.
Roman Payne
She had had sweet dreams, which possibly arose from teh fact that her little bed was very white.
Victor Hugo
She had had sweet dreams, which possibly arose from the fact that her little bed was very white.
Victor Hugo
Dear Father, I already forgave you once. I read all your letters, which fed me crumbs of love and admiration. LIke Hansel and Gretel, I followed their trail to your door. But you have left me again. I have the whole summer ahead of me to re-read your letters, and to try to understand.
Susie Morgenstern
The only way to neutralize the effect of public journals is to multiply them indefinitely.
Alexis de Tocqueville
If every second of our lives recurs an infinite number of times, we are nailed to eternity as Jesus was nailed to the cross. It is a terrifying prospect.
Milan Kundera
Why is it that showers and even storms seem to come by chance, so that many people think it quite natural to pray for rain or fine weather, though they would consider it ridiculous to ask for an eclipse by prayer?
Henri Poincaré
Rain is disagreeable, but snow is as much part of the mountain as are sunshine and clear skies.
Gaston Rébuffat
Before falling to the ground, the rain has touched the sky. (Avant de tomber au sol, La pluie a touché le ciel)
Charles de Leusse
A fashion that does not reach the streets is not a fashion
Coco Chanel
Costume jewelry is not made to give women an aura of wealth,but to make them beautifu
Coco Chanel
To have an independant mind, to think for oneself, not to follow fashion, not to seek honour or decoration, not to become part of the establishment
Marcel Schlumberge
Elegance comes from being as beautiful inside as outside.
Coco Chanel
I hate physical effort.
Emmanuelle Alt
We are not looking for endless variety--we are looking for fashion." February 10, 1967, Memo re HAIR ON SITTINGS
Diana Vreeland
I'll stop wearing black when they invent a darker color.
Emmanuelle Alt
I don't do fashion, i am fashion
Gabrielle coco Chanel
To be irreplaceable you have to be different.
Coco Chanel
Fashion exerts more power in science than it does on the shape of hats.
Simone Weil
It is fancy rather than taste which produces so many new fashions.
Voltaire
Don't buy much but make sure that what you buy is good.
Christian Dior
A new dress doesn’t get you anywhere. It's the life you’re living in the dress.
Diana Vreeland
Before you leave the house, look in the mirror and take one thing off.
Coco Chanel
Are not couturiers the poets who, from year to year, from strophe to strophe, write the anthem of the feminine body?
Roland Barthes
When a woman smiles,then her dress should smile to
Madeleine Vionnet
Isn't elegance forgetting what one is wearing?
Yves Saint-Laurent