Alphonse Daudet Quotes

15 Sourced Quotes

Pain is always new to the sufferer, but loses its originality for those around him.

Alphonse Daudet
Where would be the merit if heroes were never afraid?

Alphonse Daudet
The epithet should be the mistress of the substantive, never its lawful wife.

Alphonse Daudet
There is no law, in literature, against picking up a rusty weapon; the important thing is to be able to sharpen the blade and to reforge the hilt to fit one's hand.

Alphonse Daudet
Distrust the man who smiles before he speaks.

Alphonse Daudet
How many men with libraries over which one might write "For external use", as on druggists' labels.

Alphonse Daudet
The man of the Midi [Southern France] does not lie, he deceives himself. He does not always speak the truth but he believes he speaks it.

Alphonse Daudet
The clever way death cuts us down, but makes it look like just a thinning-out. Generations never fall with one blow - that would be too sad and too obvious. Death prefers to do it piecemeal. The meadow is attacked from several sides at the same time. One of us goes one day; another some time afterwards; you have to stand back and look around you to take in what's missing, to grasp the vast slaughter of your generation...

Alphonse Daudet
Suffering is nothing. It's all a matter of preventing those you love from suffering.

Alphonse Daudet
That's fame: just a cigar with the hot end and ash in your mouth.

Alphonse Daudet
You will see that the only liar in the Midi, if there is one, is the sun; everything that he touches he exaggerates.

Alphonse Daudet
Children are like men, the experience of others does not help them.

Alphonse Daudet
You see, my children, when the corn is ripe it must be cut; when the wine is drawn it must be drunk.

Alphonse Daudet
It is clever the way death reaps and gathers its harvests, but what somber harvests. Whole generations do not fall at once; that would be too sad, too visible. But bit by bit. The meadow is attacked on several sides at the same time. One day, one will go; the other, some time after; one must reflect, glance about oneself to notice the empty spaces, the vast contemporary killing.

Alphonse Daudet
My imagination doesn't require anything more of the book than to provide a framework within which it can wander.

Alphonse Daudet