Quotes By Anatole France

The truth is that life is delicious, horrible, charming, frightful, sweet, bitter, and that is everything.

An education which does not cultivate the will is an education that depraves the mind.

What frightens us most in a madman is his sane conversation.

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

The greatest virtue of man is perhaps curiosity.

It is human nature to think wisely and act in an absurd fashion.

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.

That man is prudent who neither hopes nor fears anything from the uncertain events of the future.

If a million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing.

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

A person is never happy except at the price of some ignorance.

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

I prefer the folly of enthusiasm to the indifference of wisdom.

Wandering re-establishes the original harmony which once existed between man and the universe.

One thing above all gives charm to men's thoughts, and this is unrest. A mind that is not uneasy irritates and bores me.

To imagine is everything, to know is nothing at all.

Nine tenths of education is encouragement.

When a thing has been said and well, have no scruple. Take it and copy it.

The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself a fool.

It is only the poor who pay cash, and that not from virtue, but because they are refused credit.

Religion has done love a great service by making it a sin.

No government ought to be without censors; and where the press is free, no one ever will. Chance is the pseudonym of God when he did not want to sign.

It is better to understand little than to misunderstand a lot.

Of all the sexual aberrations, chastity is the strangest.

In art as in love, instinct is enough.

The average man does not know what to do with this life, yet wants another one which will last forever.

The books that everybody admires are those that nobody reads.

Only men who are not interested in women are interested in women's clothes. Men who like women never notice what they wear.

Ignorance and error are necessary to life, like bread and water.

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