Quotes by French Authors - Page 70

If I walk along a shore towards a ship which has run aground, and the funnel or masts merge into the forest bordering on the sand dune, there will be a moment when these details suddenly become part of the ship, and indissolubly fused with it. As I approached, I did not perceive resemblances or proximities which finally came together to form a continuous picture of the upper part of the ship. I merely felt that the look of the object was on the point of altering, that something was imminent in this tension, as a storm is imminent in storm clouds.Suddenly the sight before me was recast in a manner satisfying to my vague expectation. Only afterwards did I recognize, as justifications for the change, the resemblance and contiguity of what I call ‘stimuli’— namely the most determinate phenomena, seen at close quarters and with which I compose the ‘true’ world. ‘How could I have failed to see that these pieces of wood were an integral part of the ship? For they were of the same colour as the ship, and fitted well enough into its superstructure.’ But these reasons for correct perception were not given as reasons beforehand. The unity of the object is based on the foreshadowing of an imminent order which is about to spring upon us a reply to questions merely latent in the landscape. It solves a problem set only in the form of a vague feeling of uneasiness, it organizes elements which up to that moment did not belong to the same universe and which, for that reason, as Kant said with profound insight, could not be associated. By placing them on the same footing, that of the unique object, synopsis makes continuity and resemblance between them possible. An impression can never by itself be associated with another impression.
Maurice Merleau-Ponty
Unfortunately in this world of ours, each person views things through a certain medium, which prevents his seeing them in the same light as others…
Alexandre Dumas
Slavery received, but the prejudice to which it has given birth remains stationary.
Alexis de Tocqueville
People meet in the course of life, they talk together, they discuss, they quarrel, without realizing that they're talking to one another across a distance, each from an observation post standing in a different place in time.
Milan Kundera
A popular Harvard business professor urged his students to read the obituaries in the New York Times before they read anything else, in order to learn from the lives of great men.
Georges F. Doriot
In the vast reaches of the dry, cold night, thousands of stars were constantly appearing, and their sparkling icicles, loosened at once, began to slip gradually toward the horizon.
Albert Camus
The body is our general medium for having a world.
Maurice Merleau-Ponty
Dantes had entered the Chateau d’If with the round, open, smiling face of a young and happy man, with whom the earlypaths of life have been smooth. and who anticipates a future corresponding with his past. This was now all changed. The oval face was lengthened, his smiling mouth had assumed the firm and markedlines which betoken resolution; his eyebrows were arched beneath a brow furrowed with thought; his eyes were full of melancholy, and from their depths occasionally sparkled gloomy fires of misanthropy and hatred; his complexion, so long kept from the sun, had now that pale color which produces, when the features are encircled with black hair, the aristocratic beauty of the man of the north; the profound learning he had acquired had besides diffused over his features a refined intellectual expression; and he had also acquired, being naturally of a goodly stature, that vigor which a frame possesses which has so long concentrated all its force within itself.
Alexandre Dumas
One of the cafés had that brilliant idea of putting up a slogan: 'the best protection against infection is a good bottle of wine', which confirmed an already prevalent opinion that alcohol is a safeguard against infectious disease. Every night, towards 2 a.m., quite a number of drunk men, ejected from the cafés , staggered down the streets, vociferating optimism.
Albert Camus
Her son would be incomparably handsome, good and powerful. He would be the expected Messiah; it is fortunate for humanity that all mothers have this pathetic faith, without it mankind would not have the ever-renascent strength to go on living.
Émile Zola
Hope is the Word which God has written on the brow of every man.
Victor Hugo
The mistakes of doctors are innumerable. They err as a rule out of optimism as to the treatment, and pessimism as to the outcome.
Marcel Proust
Very little of the great cruelty shown by men can really be attributed to cruel instinct. Most of it comes from thoughtlessness or inherited habit. The roots of cruelty, therefore, are not so much strong as widespread. But the time must come when inhumanity protected by custom and thoughtlessness will succumb before humanity championed by thought. Let us work that this time may come.
Albert Schweitzer
Who underestimates is buried in the optimism of the deads. (Qui sous-estime s'enterre - Dans l'optimisme des morts.)
Charles de Leusse
What's optimism? said Cacambo. Alas, said Candide, it is a mania for saying things are well when one is in hell.
Voltaire
A being afire with life cannot foresee death; in fact, by each of his deeds he denies that death exists. If death does take him, he is probably unaware of the fact; it amounts to no more for him than a shock or a spasm.
Marguerite Yourcenar
What a pessimist you are!" exclaimed Candide."That is because I know what life is," said Martin.
Voltaire
One day everything will be well, that is our hope. Everything's fine today, that is our illusion
Voltaire
Even the darkest night will end and the sun will rise.
Victor Hugo
Optimism," said Cacambo, "What is that?" "Alas!" replied Candide, "It is the obstinacy of maintaining that everything is best when it is worst.
Voltaire
If this is the best of possible worlds, what then are the others?
Voltaire
Stories are the only enchantment possible, for when we begin to see our suffering as a story, we are saved.
Anaïs Nin
When he grew old, Aristotle, who is not generally considered a tightrope dancer, liked to lose himself in the most labyrinthine and subtle of discourses […]. ‘The more solitary and isolated I become, the more I come to like stories,’ he said.
Michel de Certeau
But stories are worlds. New worlds for us to visit. In stories, we live forever.
Joanne Harris
I know that I too could try a story out, rebuild mine, make it live again several minutes before the full of the day, the sun, the city. But I haven't the strength, stupidly. I rise and carry on. One more time.
Danielle Collobert
They both had the same calm and dreamy little cast of mind. They delighted in stories, in old Breton legends, and their favorite sport was to go and ask for them at the cottage-doors, like beggars:"Ma'am..." or, "Kind gentleman... have you a little story to tell us, please?"And it seldom happened that they did not have one "given" them; for nearly every old Breton grandame has, at least once in her life, seen the "korrigans" dance by moonlight on the heather.
Gaston Leroux
There are only two moments when everything is possible in this life," said Petrus, "when one drinks, and when one makes up stories.
Muriel Barbery
The vigor I lacked for physical activities became incandescent when, pen in hand, I filled those pages with invented stories. Sometimes they were intimately about me – family tales, parental exploits – sometimes they became horrific stories sprinkled with torture, death, and reunion: crazy games and tear-soaked sagas.
Philippe Grimbert
There are fairy stories to be written for adults. Stories that are still in a green state.
André Breton
We're fragile things, Harb. It doesn't look like it but we are. We're here one minute, and just like that, we're gone. The Peacemakers (The Nemesis Engines)
Olivier A. Blanchard
I look back upon my youth and realize how so many people gave me help, understanding, courage – very important things to me – and they never knew it. They entered into my life and became powers within me. All of us live spiritually by what others have given us, often unwittingly, in the significant hours of our life. At the time these significant hours may not even be perceived. We may not recognize them until years later when we look back, as one remembers some long-ago music or a boyhood landscape. We all owe to others much of the gentleness and wisdom that we have made our own; and we may well ask ourselves what will others owe to us.
Albert Schweitzer
Gratitude is a species of love, excited in us by some action of the person for whom we have it, and by which we believe that he has done some good to us, or at least that he has had the intention of doing so. Passions, III, 193. XI, 473-474. Trans. John Morris
René Descartes
Be happy, noble heart, be blessed for all the good thou hast done and wilt do hereafter, and let my gratitude remain in obscurity like your good deeds.
Alexandre Dumas
Steam seems to have killed all gratitude in the hearts of sailors.
Jules Verne
Appreciation is a wonderful thing. It makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well.
Voltaire
My dear,In the midst of hate, I found there was, within me, an invincible love.In the midst of tears, I found there was, within me, an invincible smile.In the midst of chaos, I found there was, within me, an invincible calm.I realized, through it all, that…In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer.And that makes me happy. For it says that no matter how hard the world pushes against me, within me, there’s something stronger – something better, pushing right back.Truly yours,Albert Camus”I like this because only one part is usually quoted but the full quote has such symmetry.
Albert Camus
Had I been placed among those nations which are said to live still in the sweet freedom of nature's first laws, I assure you I should very gladly have portrayed myself here entire and wholly naked.Thus, reader, I am myself the matter of my book; you would be unreasonable to spend your leisure on so frivolous and vain a subject.
Michel de Montaigne
Certainly all virtues are very dear to God, but humility pleases Him above all the others, and it seems that He can refuse it nothing.
Francis de Sales
Humility consists in not esteeming ourselves above other men, and in not seeking to be esteemed above them.
Francis de Sales
Let us make our way through these low valleys of the humble and little virtues. We shall see in them the roses amid the thorns, charity that shows its beauty among interior and exterior afflictions, the lilies of purity.
Francis de Sales
A man who can own pearls does not bother about shells, and those who aspire to virtue do not trouble themselves over honors.
Francis de Sales
If after all your efforts you cannot succeed, you could not please our Lord more than by sacrificing to Him your will, and remaining in tranquility, humility, and devotion, entirely conformed and submissive to His divine will and good pleasure.
Francis de Sales
The King of Glory does not reward His servants according to the dignity of their office, but according to the humility and love with which they have exercised it.
Francis de Sales
Little deeds that proceed from charity please God and have their place among meritorious acts.
Francis de Sales
There is no inconsistency when God raises up those who have fallen prostrate.
John Calvin
The sciences have two extremities which meet. The first is the ignorance in which men find themselves at birth. The second is that attained by great souls. They have surveyed whatever man can know, find that they know all, meet in that same ignorance whence they started. It is a clever ignorance, which knows itself. Those among them who, having emerged from the first ignorance, have been unable to achieve the other & have some smattering of this self-satisfied knowledge, pose as experts. The latter do not disturb people, are no more mistaken in their judgments on everything than others. The masses, the skilled, make up the retinue of a nation. The others, who respect it, are equally respected by it.
Comte de Lautréamont
We can be knowledgeable with another man's knowledge, but we can't be wise with another man's wisdom.
Michel de Montaigne
While there are things about which one does not boast, there are others for which to be pitied would be all too humiliating.
Gaston Leroux
Que sais je? [What do I know?]
Montaigne
On the highest throne in the world, we still sit only on our own bottom.
Michel de Montaigne
Why was love such an addictive drug?Why did loving someone cause such suffering?
Guillaume Musso
A man is not hurt so much by what happens, as by his opinion of what happens.
Michel de Montaigne
If you wait for the perfect moment when all is safe and assured, it may never arrive. Mountains will not be climbed, races won, or lasting happiness achieved.
Maurice Chevalier
To love a book is, above all, to love its author: we want to meet him again, we want to spend our days with him.
Michel Houellebecq
Couldn't I try...Naturally, it wouldn't be a question of a tune...But couldn't I in another medium?...It would have to be a book: I don't know how to do anything else. But not a history book: history talks about what has existed - an existent can never justify the existence of another existent. My mistake was to try to resuscitate Monsieur de Rollebon. Another kind of book. I don't quite know which kind - but you would have to guess, behind the printed words, behind the pages, something which didn't exist, which was above existence. The sort of story, for example, which could never happen, an adventure. It would have to be beautiful and hard as steel and make people ashamed of their existence.I am going, I feel irresolute. I dare not make a decision. If I were sure that I had talent...but I have never, never written anything of that sort; historical articles, yes - if you could call them that. A book. A novel. And there would be people who would read this novel and who would say: 'It was Antoine Roquentin who wrote it, he was a red-headed fellow who hung about in cafés', and they would think that about my life as I think about the life of the Negress: as about something precious and almost legendary. A book. Naturally, at first it would only be a tedious, tiring job, it wouldn't prevent me from existing or from feeling that I exist. But a time would have to come when the book would be written, would be behind me, and I think that a little of its light would fall over my past. Then, through it, I might be able to recall my life without repugnance. Perhaps one day, thinking about this very moment, about this dismal moment at which I am waiting, round-shouldered, for it to be time to get on the train, perhaps I might feel my heart beat faster and say to myself: 'It was on that day, at that moment that it all started.' And I might succeed - in the past, simply in the past - in accepting myself.
Jean-Paul Sartre
A book has neither object nor subject; it is made of variously formed matters, and very different dates and speeds.
Gilles Deleuze
Judge the goodness of a book by the energy of the punches it has given you. I believe the greatest characteristic of genius, is, above all, force.
Gustave Flaubert
Haven't you ever happened to come across in a book some vague notion that you've had, some obscure idea that returns from afar and that seems to express completely your most subtle feelings?
Gustave Flaubert
In Chinese love stories the one who loves always starts by borrowing a book from the beloved.
Dai Sijie
It seems to me that the Russian prestige is declining and that America holds in its hands the immediate future of the world: as long as America knows how to develop the sense of the earth at the same time as her sense of liberty." [Written from Peking, October 1945, on the eve of departure, after having been stuck there since the war began.]
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin