Quotes by French Authors - Page 71

It is not always the magnitude of the differences observed between species that must determine specific distinctions, but the constant preservation of those differences in reproduction.
Jean-Baptiste Lamarck
Might one not say that in the chance combination of nature's production, since only those endowed with certain relations of suitability could survive, it is no cause for wonder that this suitability is found in all species that exist today? Chance, one might say, produced an innumerable multitude of individuals; a small number turned out to be constructed in such fashion that the parts of the animal could satisfy its needs; in another, infinitely greater number, there was neither suitability nor order: all of the later have perished; animals without a mouth could not live, others lacking organs for reproduction could not perpetuate themselves: the only ones to have remained are those in which were found order and suitability; and these species, which we see today, are only the smallest part of what blind fate produced.
Pierre-Louis Moreau De Maupertuis
It is not the organs—that is, the character and form of the animal's bodily parts—that have given rise to its habits and particular structures. It is the habits and manner of life and the conditions in which its ancestors lived that have in the course of time fashioned its bodily form, its organs and qualities.
Jean-Baptiste Lamarck
First LawIn every animal which has not passed the limit of its development, a more frequent and continuous use of any organ gradually strengthens, develops and enlarges that organ, and gives it a power proportional to the length of time it has been so used; while the permanent disuse of any organ imperceptibly weakens and deteriorates it, and progressively diminishes its functional capacity, until it finally disappears.Second LawAll the acquisitions or losses wrought by nature on individuals, through the influence of the environment in which their race has long been placed, and hence through the influence of the predominant use or permanent disuse of any organ; all these are preserved by reproduction to the new individuals which arise, provided that the acquired modifications are common to both sexes, or at least to the individuals which produce the young.
Jean-Baptiste Lamarck
(Evolution) general condition to which all theories, all hypotheses, all systems must bow and which they must satisfy henceforward if they are to be thinkable and true. Evolution is a light which illuminates all facts, a curve that all lines must follow.
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
The fundamental biological variant is DNA. That is why Mendel's definition of the gene as the unvarying bearer of hereditary traits, its chemical identification by Avery (confirmed by Hershey), and the elucidation by Watson and Crick of the structural basis of its replicative invariance, are without any doubt the most important discoveries ever made in biology. To this must be added the theory of natural selection, whose certainty and full significance were established only by those later theories.
Jacques Monod
When one ponders on the tremendous journey of evolution over the past three billion years or so, the prodigious wealth of structures it has engendered, and the extraordinarily effective teleonomic performances of living beings from bacteria to man, one may well find oneself beginning to doubt again whether all this could conceivably be the product of an enormous lottery presided over by natural selection, blindly picking the rare winners from among numbers drawn at random. [Nevertheless,] a detailed review of the accumulated modern evidence [shows] that this conception alone is compatible with the facts.
Jacques Monod
Even today a good many distinguished minds seem unable to accept or even to understand that from a source of noise natural selection alone and unaided could have drawn all the music of the biosphere. In effect natural selection operates upon the products of chance and can feed nowhere else; but it operates in a domain of very demanding conditions, and from this domain chance is barred. It is not to chance but to these conditions that evolution owes its generally progressive course, its successive conquests, and the impression it gives of a smooth and steady unfolding.
Jacques Monod
In the end, only the truth will survive.
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
It is the destiny of things real to destroy those that are artifice.
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
If triangles had a god, he would have three sides.
Charles de Secondat Baron de Montesquieu
It is certain that such a revolution in thought - that is, such an expansion of consciousness, such an evolution of intelligence - is not the result of a whim. It is in fact a question of a cosmic influence to which the earth, along with everything in it, is subjected. A phase in the gestation of the planetary particle of our solar system is completed. Gaston Bachelard observes, in this connection, what he calls “a mutation of Spirit.” A new period must begin, and this is heralded by seismic movement, climate changes, and finally, above all, by the spirit that animates man.
Schwaller de Lubicz
To commit the least possible sin is the law for man. To live without sin is the dream of an angel. Everything terrestrial is subject to sin. Sin is a gravitation.
Victor Hugo
Flirting is the sin of the virtuous and the virtue of thesinful.
Paul Bourget
To be a saint is to be an exception; to be a true man is the rule. Err, fail, sin if you must, but be upright. To sin as little as possible is the law for men; to sin not at all is a dream for angels. All earthly things are subject to sin; if is like the force of gravity.
Victor Hugo
He [Muffat] experienced a sense of pleasure mingled with remorse, the sort of pleasure peculiar to those Catholics whom the fear of hell spurs on to commit sin.
Émile Zola
Sin can be forgiven, but stupid is forever.
Coco Chanel
He who has learned to look to God in everything he does is at the same time diverted from all vain thoughts.
John Calvin
The more grievous the sin, the greater the repentance, God was bidding His time.
Émile Zola
May your criminal enjoyments vanish as a shadow! may your ill-gotten wealth leave you without a resource; and may you yourself remain alone and deserted, to learn the vanity of these things, which now divert you from better pursuits!
Antoine François Prévost d'Exiles
People are always ashamed of the misery that has befallen them, as though it were an act of divine retribution for a long-forgotten sin of theirs
Pascal Garnier
Sin as little as possible-that is the law of mankind. Not to sin at all is the dream of the angel. All earthly things are subject to sin. Sin is like gravity.
Victor Hugo
If I created a new depravity I would be a priestess, while my imitators would founder, after my reign, in abominable filth...Don't you think that proud men, copying Satan, are more guilty than the Satan of the Bible, who invented pride? Is Satan not respectable because of his unprecedented and divinely inspired sin?
Rachilde
Sin became a luxury, a flower set in her hair, a diamond fastened on her brow.
Émile Zola
Curiosity is gluttony. To see is to devour.
Victor Hugo
One may, in a case of exigency, introduce the reader in to a nuptial chamber, not into a virginal chamber. Verse would hardly venture it, prose must not.It is the interior of a flower that is not yet unfolded, it is whiteness in the dark, it is the private cell of a closed lily, which must not be gazed upon by man so long as the sun has not gazed upon it. Woman in the bud is sacred. That innocent bud which opens, that adorable half-nudity which is afraid of itself, that white foot which takes refuge in a slipper, that throat which veils itself before a mirror as though a mirror were an eye, that chemise which makes haste to rise up and conceal the shoulder for a creaking bit of furniture or a passing vehicle, those cords tied, those clasps fastened, those laces drawn, those tremors, those shivers of cold and modesty, that exquisite affright in every movement, that almost winged uneasiness where there is no cause for alarm, the successive phases of dressing, as charming as the clouds of dawn,—it is not fitting at all that all this should be narrated, and it is too much to have even called attention to it.
Victor Hugo
Moreover, the sciences are monuments devoted to the public good; each citizen owes to them a tribute proportional to his talents. While the great men, carried to the summit of the edifice, draw and put up the higher floors, the ordinary artists scattered in the lower floors, or hidden in the obscurity of the foundations, must only seek to improve what cleverer hands have created.
Charles-Augustin de Coulomb
Let us hope that the advent of a successful flying machine, now only dimly foreseen and nevertheless thought to be possible, will bring nothing but good into the world; that it shall abridge distance, make all parts of the globe accessible, bring men into closer relation with each other, advance civilization, and hasten the promised era in which there shall be nothing but peace and goodwill among all men.
Octave Chanute
I have had occasion to meet with, in convents for instance, literally saintly examples of practical charity, they have generally had the brisk, decided, undisturbed and slightly brutal air of a busy surgeon, the face in which one can discern no commiseration, no tenderness at the sight of suffering humanity, and no fear of hurting it, the face devoid of gentleness or sympathy, the sublime face of true goodness.
Marcel Proust
What good the eyes without anything behind them ? (A quoi bon les yeux - Sans rien derrière eux ?)
Charles de Leusse
[P]erhaps this was how you knew a good deed was truly good: you didn't necessarily feel better afterwards.
François Lelord
And now,' said the unknown, 'farewell kindness, humanity, and gratitude! Farewell to all the feelings that expand the heart! I have been heaven's substitute to recompense the good - now the god of vengeance yields to me his power to punish the wicked!
Alexandre Dumas
The best is the enemy of good.
Voltaire
Women are extraordinary creatures!
Roman Payne
Look for the woman in the dress. If there is no woman, there is no dress.
Coco Chanel
Honor women! They strew celestial roses on the pathway of our terrestrial life.
Pierre-Claude-Victor Boiste
Spanish rain,A maiden’s dress,Apothecary pillsAnd ancient thrills;Melancholy killsA girl’s caress.(—Roman Payne; Valencia, Spain, November 2nd 2012)
Roman Payne
I sat up in the strange bed fearing it had been a dream, afraid I would never see her again. Not because I wanted anything from her, only her presence. The disappearance of the presence of beauty is the most despairing of events on this time-wheel of ours that rolls onward towards death.
Roman Payne
Wanderess, Wanderess, weave us a story of seduction and ruse. Heroic be the Wanderess, the world be her muse.
Roman Payne
A woman who cuts her hair is about to change her life.
Coco Chanel
She wakes in a puddle of sunlight.Her hands asleep beside her.Her hair draped on the lawnlike a mantle of cloth.I give her my trothfor our love is whole;her breath is my wine,her scent is my soul.
Roman Payne
For what is love if one loves a woman without knowing her? Just a decision to love? Or even an imitation? The question concerns us all: If, from our childhood on, the examples of love were not there inviting us to copy them, would we know what "loving" means?
Milan Kundera
Yes, this is the only good thing in life: love! To hold a woman you love in your arms! That is the ultimate in human happiness.
Guy de Maupassant
Hitler not from a woman is born, but from the men bitterness.(Hitler n'est pas né d'une femme, - Mais de l'amertume des hommes)
Charles de Leusse
Cigarette kisses the flame. But the mouth kisses the woman. (Cigarette embrasse la flamme. - Mais la bouche embrasse la femme.)
Charles de Leusse
He went farther; agonised by the reflection, at the moment when it passed by him, so near and yet so infinitely remote, that, while it was addressed to their ears, it knew them not, he would regret, almost, that it had a meaning of its own, an intrinsic and unalterable beauty, foreign to themselves, just as in the jewels given to us, or even in the letters written to us by a woman with whom we are in love, we find fault with the 'water' of a stone, or with the words of a sentence because they are not fashioned exclusively from the spirit of a fleeting intimacy and of a 'lass unaparalleled.
Marcel Proust
The remembrance of a woman is longer than a tear. (Le souvenir d'une femme - Est plus long qu'une larme.)
Charles de Leusse
A woman is human, obviously, but she represents a slightly different kind of humanity.
Michel Houellebecq
No matter the age, a woman who is unloved is lost - unloved she might as well die.
Coco Chanel
We are all very much alike in France in this respect; we still remain knights, knights of love and fortune, since God has been abolished whose bodyguard we really were. But nobody can ever get woman out of our hearts; there she is, and there she will remain, and we love her, and shall continue to love her, and go on committing all kinds of follies on her account as long as there is a France on the map of Europe; and even if France were to be wiped off the map, there would always be Frenchmen left.
Guy de Maupassant
There is always a need for intoxication: China has opium, Islam has hashish, the West has woman.
André Malraux
She was no longer the fair-haired, colourless girl whom I had seen at the church fifteen years before, but a stout, over-dressed lady, one of those ladies with no age, no character, no elegance, no wit, nor any of the attributes that constitute a woman. She was merely a mother, a fat, commonplace mother, the breeder, the human brood-mare, the procreating machine made of flesh, with no interests but her children and her cookery-book.
Guy de Maupassant
But this is till the same girl who once lived in the steppes, wild and indomitable. Even when she ceased to play in the falling snow, the snow continued to fall within her soul. She never sough lovers among the wealthy men and the crown princes who prostrated themselves before her; her heart, like her voice, remained faultless. The reputation, temperament and talent of the woman partook of exactly the same crystalline transparency and icy clarity. ("The Glass Of Blood")
Jean Lorrain
A strange girl, all phosphorous and cantharides, burning with every desire! And burning with every vice!
Jean Lorrain
Her vice takes hold of her again, but she still refrains until some moment when, gnawed by some hideous caprice, she comes aground like a mournful wreck ruined by lust, in the midst of her own banal, perfidious pollution.
Jean Lorrain
But that woman is an encyclopedia!Of all vices, ancient and modern, and terribly interesting to leaf through!
Jean Lorrain
They courted the face on the screen, the face of translucence, the face of wax on which men found it possible to imprint the image of their fantasy.
Anaïs Nin
In Sanskrit, there exists no word for ‘The Individual’ (L’Individu). En Grèce antique, il n’y avait aucun mot pour dire ‘Devoir’ (Duty). In French, the word for ‘Wife’ is the same as the word for ‘Woman.’ En anglais, nous n’avons aucun mot semblable à l’exquise ‘Jouissance!
Roman Payne
Put your Body First!
Catherine Piot
A very large percentage of illnesses are the expressions of inadequate responses to the environment.
René Dubos