Anatole France quotes - page 2

Irony is the gaiety of reflection and the joy of wisdom. (Anatole France)
People who have no weaknesses are terrible there is no way to take advantage of them.
Anatole France
History books that contain no lies are extremely dull.
Anatole France
Never lend books, for no one ever returns them; the only books I have in my library are books that other folks have left me.
Anatole France
A good critic is one who narrates the adventures of his mind among masterpieces.
Anatole France
It is well for the heart to be naive and the mind not to be.
Anatole France
If the path be beautiful, let us not ask where it leads.
Anatole France
You learn to speak by speaking, to study by studying, to run by running, to work by working; in just the same way, you learn to love by loving.
Anatole France
Nine tenths of education is encouragement.
Anatole France
Without lies humanity would perish of despair and boredom.
Anatole France
Wandering re-establishes the original harmony which once existed between man and the universe. (Anatole France)
Of all the sexual aberrations, chastity is the strangest.
Anatole France
Devout believers are safeguarded in a high degree against the risk of certain neurotic illnesses; their acceptance of the universal neurosis spares them the task of constructing a personal one.
Anatole France
The pseudonym for God when He did not want to sign.
Anatole France
Those who have given themselves the most concern about the happiness of peoples have made their neighbors very miserable.
Anatole France
To know is nothing at all to imagine is everything.
Anatole France
What can be more foolish than to think that all this rare fabric of heaven and earth could come by chance, when all the skill of art is not able to make an oyster!
Anatole France
We do not know what to do with this short life, yet we want another which will be eternal.
Anatole France
If it were absolutely necessary to choose, I would rather be guilty of an immoral act than of a cruel one.
Anatole France
We have drugs to make women speak, but none to keep them silent.
Anatole France
The finest words in the world are only vain sounds, if you cannot comprehend them. (Anatole France)
In every well-governed state, wealth is a sacred thing in democracies it is the only sacred thing.
Anatole France
You become a good writer just as you become a good joiner by planing down your sentences.
Anatole France
The average man, who does not know what to do with his life, wants another one which will last forever.
Anatole France
A people living under the perpetual menace of war and invasion is very easy to govern. It demands no social reform. It does not haggle over expenditures for armaments and military equipment. It pays without discussion, it ruins itself, and that is an excellent thing for the syndicates of financiers and manufacturers for whom patriotic terrors are an abundant source of gain.
Anatole France