Anatole France Quotes

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We have medicines to make women speak; we have none to make them keep silence.

Anatole France (The Man Who Married a Dumb Wife, 1912)

Innocence most often is a good fortune and not a virtue.

Anatole France (The Gods Are Athirst, 1912)

The whole art of teaching is only the art of awakening the natural curiosity of young minds for the purpose of satisfying it afterwards.

Anatole France (The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard, 1881)

It is only by amusing oneself that one can learn.

Anatole France (The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard, 1881)

They were born, they suffered, they died.

Anatole France (Opinions of Jérôme Coignard, 1893)

If the path be beautiful, let us not question where it leads.

Anatole France

In every well-governed state, wealth is a sacred thing; in democracies it is the only sacred thing.

Anatole France (Penguin Island, 1908)

Time deals gently only with those who take it gently.

Anatole France (The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard, 1881)

Until one has loved an animal, a part of one's soul remains unawakened.

Anatole France

Of all the ways of defining man, the worst is the one which makes him out to be a rational animal.

Anatole France (Le Petit Pierre, 1918)

If it were absolutely necessary to choose, I would rather be guilty of an immoral act than of a cruel one.

Anatole France (The Red Lily, 1894)

He flattered himself on being a man without any prejudices; and this pretension itself is a very great prejudice.

Anatole France (The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard, 1881)

Custom alone regulates morals.

Anatole France (The Revolt of the Angels, 1914)

Nine-tenths of education is encouragement.

Anatole France

Lovers who love truly do not write down their happiness.

Anatole France (The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard, 1881)

The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.

Anatole France (The Red Lily, 1894)

Suffering - how divine it is, how misunderstood! We owe to it all that is good in us, all that gives value to life; we owe to it pity, we owe to it courage, we owe to it all the virtues.

Anatole France (The Garden of Epicurus, 1895)

All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another.

Anatole France (The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard, 1881)

You appear to me to have no arts and not to work in metals. But your hearts are pure and your hands are innocent, and the truth will easily enter into your souls.

Anatole France (Penguin Island, 1908)

An education isn't how much you have committed to memory, or even how much you know. It's being able to differentiate between what you do know and what you don't.

Anatole France

War will disappear only when men shall take no part whatever in violence and shall be ready to suffer every persecution that their abstention will bring them. It is the only way to abolish war.

Anatole France (Quoted by Leo Tolstoy in The Law of Love and the Law of Violence, 1908)

It is almost impossible systematically to constitute a natural moral law. Nature has no principles. She furnishes us with no reason to believe that human life is to be respected. Nature, in her indifference, makes no distinction between good and evil.

Anatole France (The Revolt of the Angels, 1914)

"His remarks were always wise, well-expressed and beautiful," went on Monsieur Bergeret, "and that used to frighten us. Logic is what alarms us most in a madman."
What frightens us most in a madman is his sane conversation.

Anatole France (Monsieur Bergeret in Paris, 1901)

Theologians and philosophers, who make God the creator of Nature and the architect of the Universe, reveal Him to us as an illogical and unbalanced Being. They declare He is benevolent because they are afraid of Him, but they are forced to admit the truth that His ways are vicious and beyond understanding. They attribute a malignity to Him seldom to be found in any human being. And that is how they get human beings to worship Him. For our miserable species would never lavish worship on a just and benevolent God from whom they had nothing to fear.

Anatole France (The Gods Are Athirst, 1912)

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Anatole France Biography

Born: April 16, 1844
Died: October 12, 1924

Anatole France was a French novelist, poet and journalist. He is best known for his many succesful novels and was also considered to be a revered man of letters. He also won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1921.

Notable Works

The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard (1881)
Thaïs
(1890)
The Garden of Epicurus (1895)
A Chronicle of Our Own Times (1897-1901)
Crainquebille (1903)
Penguin Island (1908)
The Gods Are Athirst (1912)
The Revolt of the Angels (1914)
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