Quotes by French Authors - Page 8

In order to be irreplaceable one must always be different.
Coco Chanel
An artist can show things that other people are terrified of expressing.
Louise Bourgeois
If you must love your neighbor as yourself it is at least as fair to love yourself as your neighbor.
Nicolas de Chamfort
She lacks confidence she craves admiration insatiably. She lives on the reflections of herself in the eyes of others. She does not dare to be herself.
Anaïs Nin
I care not so much what I am to others as what I am to myself. I will be rich by myself and not by borrowing.
Michel de Montaigne
Our own interests are still an exquisite means for dazzling our eyes agreeably.
Blaise Pascal
To penetrate one's being one must go armed to the teeth.
Paul Valéry
I have never seen a greater monster or miracle in the world than myself.
Michel de Montaigne
Be like the bird that passing on her flight awhile on boughs too slight feels them give way beneath her and yet sings knowing that she hath wings.
Victor Hugo
Each man must look to himself to teach him the meaning of life. It is not something discovered it is something moulded.
Antoine De Saint Exupery
Art is I science is we.
Claude Bernard
A few observations and much reasoning lead to error many observations and a little reasoning to truth.
Alexis Carrel
The simplest schoolboy is now familiar with truths for which Archimedes would have sacrificed his life.
Ernest Renan
Science is built of facts the way a house is built of bricks but an accumulation of facts is no more science than a pile of bricks is a house.
Henri Poincaré
My advice is to look out for engineers - they begin with sewing machines and end up with the atomic bomb.
Marcel Pagnol
Sadness flies away on the wings of time.
Jean de La Fontaine
Sadness flies on the wings of the morning and out of the heart of darkness comes the light.
Jean Giraudoux
My downfall raises me to infinite heights.
Napoléon Bonaparte
I never was ruined but twice - once when I lost a lawsuit and once when I gained one.
Voltaire
The first sigh of love is the last of wisdom.
Antoine Bret
All roads lead to Rome but our antagonists think we should choose different paths.
Jean de La Fontaine
I am the State.
Louis XIV
Is there anyone so wise as to learn by the experience of others?
Voltaire
Nothing is so infectious as example.
François de La Rochefoucauld
Emulation admires and strives to imitate great actions envy is only moved to malice.
Honoré de Balzac
Example is not the main thing in influencing others. It is the only thing.
Albert Schweitzer
We deceive ourselves when we fancy that only weakness needs support. Strength needs it far more.
Anne-Sophie Swetchine
We must dare and dare again and go on daring.
Georges Jacques Danton
If man is not ready to risk his life where is his dignity?
André Malraux
Speaking of Ted Turner The important thing is this: to be able at any moment to sacrifice what we are for what we could become.
Charles Du Bos
The power of habit and the charm of novelty are the two adverse forces which explain the follies of mankind.
Maria De Beausacq
Providence has hidden a charm in difficult undertakings which is appreciated only by those who dare to grapple with them.
Anne-Sophie Swetchine
What is necessary is never a risk.
Cardinal de Retz
The torment of precautions often exceeds the dangers to be avoided. It is sometimes better to abandon one's self to destiny.
Napoléon Bonaparte
Few are they who have never had a chance to achieve happiness-and fewer those who have taken that chance.
André Maurois
An individual dies ... when instead of taking risks and hurling himself toward being he cowers within and takes refuge there.
E. M. Cioran
I postpone death by living by suffering by error by risking by giving by losing.
Anaïs Nin
You risk just as much in being credulous as in being suspicious.
Denis Diderot
The greatest achievement of the human spirit is to live up to one's opportunities and make the most of one's resources.
Vauvenargues
All men have happiness as their object: there is no exception. However different the means they employ they aim at the same end.
Blaise Pascal
We live counterfeit lives in order to resemble the idea we first had of ourselves.
André Gide
The greatest thing in the world is to know how to be one's own self
Michel de Montaigne
I was and I always shall be hampered by what I think other people will say.
Violette Leduc
Nothing is good for everyone but only relatively to some people.
André Gide
Freedom and constraint are two aspects of the same necessity the necessity of being the man you are and not another. You are free to be that man but not free to be another.
Antoine De Saint Exupery
Those who love a cause are those who love the life which has to be led in order to serve it.
Simone Weil
Everyone has a right to his own course of action.
Molière
I don't tell the truth any more to those who can't make use of it. I tell it mostly to myself because it always changes me.
Anaïs Nin
At last I perceive that in revolutions the supreme power finally rests with the most abandoned.
Georges Jacques Danton
There is only one step from the sublime to the ridiculous.
Napoleon
I survived. (J'ai vecu.)
Emmanuel Joseph Sieyes
The most dangerous moment for a bad government is when it begins to reform.
Alexis de Tocqueville
The role of a retired person is no longer to possess one.
Simone de Beauvoir
Republics are brought to their ends by luxury monarchies by poverty.
Charles Montesquieu
Don't wait for the Last Judgment. It takes place every day.
Albert Camus
Man is a venerating animal. He venerates as easily as he purges himself. When they take away from him the gods of his fathers he looks for others abroad.
Max Jacob
Faith consists in believing when it is beyond the power of reason to believe. It is not enough that a thing be possible for it to be believed.
Voltaire
The opinions which we hold of one another our relations with friends and kinsfolk are in no sense permanent save in appearance but are as eternally fluid as the sea itself.
Marcel Proust
We rarely confide in those who are better than we are.
Albert Camus
I respect only those who resist me but cannot tolerate them.
Charles de Gaulle