Quotes by French Authors - Page 9

One must never lose time in vainly regretting the past or in complaining against the changes which cause us discomfort for change is the essence of life.
Anatole France
The profits of good luck are perishable if you build on fortune you build on sand the more advancement you achieve the more dangers you run.
Marquis de Racan
To make a crooked stick straight we bend it the contrary way.
Michel Montaigne
What helps luck is a habit of watching for opportunities of having a patient but restless mind of sacrificing one's ease or vanity of uniting a love of detail to foresight and of passing through hard times bravely and cheerfully.
Charles Victor Cherbuliez
It is one thing to be gifted and quite another thing to be worthy of one's own gift.
Nadia Boulanger
Many are destined to reason wrongly others not to reason at all: and others to persecute those who do reason.
Voltaire
The last advance of reason is to recognize that it is surpassed by innumerable things it is feeble if it cannot realize that.
Blaise Pascal
All our reasoning ends in surrender to feeling.
Blaise Pascal
The field of consciousness is tiny. It accepts only one problem at a time. Get into a fist fight put your mind on the strategy of the fight and you will not feel the other fellow's punches.
Antoine De Saint Exupery
I like reality. It tastes of bread.
Jean Anouilh
If one considered life as a simple loan one would perhaps be less exacting.
Eugène Delacroix
We never enjoy perfect happiness our most fortunate successes are mingled with sadness some anxieties always perplex the reality of our satisfaction.
Pierre Corneille
All our interior world is reality - and that perhaps more so than our apparent world.
Marc Chagall
War is not an adventure. It is a disease. It is like typhus.
Antoine De Saint Exupery
The chief pang of most trials is not so much the actual suffering itself as our own spirit of resistance to it.
Jean Nicholas Grou
We must like what we have when we don't have what we like.
Roger de Rabutin
Better is the enemy of the good.
Voltaire
The punishment of criminals should be of use when a man is hanged he is good for nothing.
Voltaire
The public! the public! How many fools does it take to make up a public?
Sebastien Chamfort
Prosperity makes some friends and many enemies.
Vauvenargues
Property is theft.
Proudhon
Progress - the stride of God!
Victor Hugo
Doubt is not a pleasant condition but certainty is.
Voltaire
What saves a man is to take a step. Then another step. It is always the same step but you have to take it.
Antoine De Saint Exupery
It so happens that the world is undergoing a transformation to which no change that has yet occurred can be compared either in scope or in rapidity.
Charles de Gaulle
That which comes into the world to disturb nothing deserves neither respect nor patience.
René Char
The infinitely little have pride infinitely great.
Voltaire
I would have every minister of the gospel address his audience with the zeal of a friend with the generous energy of a father and with the exuberant affection of a mother.
François Fénelon
The test of a preacher is that his congregation goes away saying not What a lovely sermon but I will do something!
St. Francis de Sales
Prayer like radium is a luminous and self-generating form of energy.
Dr. Alexis Carrel
What I dislike least in my former self are the moments of prayer.
André Gide
Our rages daughters of despair creep and squirm like worms. Prayer is the only form of revolt which remains upright.
Georges Bernanos
To pray together in whatever tongue or ritual is the most tender brotherhood of hope and sympathy that man can contract in this life.
Madame de Stael
Prayer is a cry of distress a demand for help a hymn of love.
Dr. Alexis Carrel
Jesus Christ is a God whom we approach without pride and before whom we humble ourselves without despair.
Blaise Pascal
When we pray we link ourselves with an inexhaustible motive power.
Dr. Alexis Carrel
The influence of prayer on the human mind and body ... can be measured in terms of increased physical buoyancy greater intellectual vigor moral stamina and a deeper understanding of the realities underlying human relationships.
Dr. Alexis Carrel
The answer of our prayers is secured by the fact that in rejecting them God would in a certain sense deny His own nature.
John Calvin
He who labors as he prays lifts his heart to God with his hands.
Bernard of Clairvaux
I would have no desire other than to accomplish thy will. Teach me to pray pray thyself in me.
Francois de Fenelon
A little lifting of the heart suffices a little remembrance of God one act of inward worship are prayers which however short are nevertheless acceptable to God.
Brother Lawrence
With God there is no need for long speeches.
Jane Frances de Chantal
In prayer more is accomplished by listening than by talking.
Jane Frances de Chantal
We ought to act with God in the greatest simplicity speak to Him frankly and plainly and implore His assistance in our affairs.
Brother Lawrence
God prefers bad verses recited with a pure heart to the finest verses chanted by the wicked.
Voltaire
I pray like a robber asking alms at the door of a farmhouse to which he is ready to set fire.
Léon Bloy
Follow your own way of speaking to our Lord sincerely lovingly confidently and simply as your heart dictates.
Jane Frances de Chantal
The man who says his prayers in the evening is a captain posting his sentries. After that he can sleep.
Charles Baudelaire
Time spent in prayer is never wasted.
Francois de Fenelon
Those who always pray are necessary to those who never pray.
Victor Hugo
You need not cry very loud he is nearer to us than we think.
Brother Lawrence
Prayer is the force as real as terrestrial gravity. As a physician I have seen men after all other therapy had failed lifted out of disease and melancholy by the serene effort of prayer. Only in prayer do we achieve that complete and harmonious assembly of body mind and spirit which gives the frail human reed its unshakable strength.
Dr. Alexis Carrel
Even if no command to pray had existed our very weakness would have suggested it.
Francois de Fenelon
Prayer is an end to isolation. It is living our daily life with someone with him who alone can deliver us from solitude.
Georges Lefevre
A refusal of praise is a desire to be praised twice.
La Rochefoucauld
I would have praised you more had you praised me less.
Louis XIV
We offer up prayers to God only because we have made Him after our own image. We treat Him like a Pasha or a Sultan who is capable of being exasperated and appeased.
Voltaire
There are few men who dare to publish to the world the prayers they make to Almighty God.
Michel de Montaigne
Be advised that all flatterers live at the expense of those who listen to them.
Jean de La Fontaine
Man's responsibility increases as that of the gods decreases.
André Gide