Anatole France Quotes

86 Sourced Quotes

The power of love itself weakens and gradually becomes lost with age, like all the other energies of man.

Anatole France
Every vice you destroy has a corresponding virtue, which perishes along with it.

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
A beautiful fig-tree raised itself in a hollow of the island and thrust forth its branches far and wide. The inhabitants of the island used to worship it.
And the holy Mael said to them: "You worship this tree because it is beautiful. Therefore you are capable of feeling beauty. Now I come to reveal to you the hidden beauty." And he taught them the Gospel. And after having instructed them, he baptized them with salt and water.

Anatole France
I do not know any reading more easy, more fascinating, more delightful than a catalogue.

Anatole France
"It is not likely," remarked Joséphin Leclerc, "that the future will be such as you have seen it. I do not wish for the coming of socialism, but I dread it not. Collectivism at the helm would be quite another thing than is imagined. Who was it who said, carrying back his thoughts to the time of Constantine and of the Church's early triumphs : 'Christianity is triumphant, but its triumph is subject to the conditions imposed by life on all political and religious parties. All of them, whatever they may be, undergo so complete a transformation in the struggle that after victory there remains of themselves but the name and a few symbols of the last idea'?"

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

Anatole France
The good critic is he who relates the adventures of his soul in the midst of masterpieces.

Anatole France
When a thing has been said and well said, have no scruple: take it and copy it.

Anatole France
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 into another!

Anatole France
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
It is well for the heart to be naive and for the mind not to be.

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

Anatole France
You seem to have dreamt on the white stone, in the midst of the people of dreams, since you dreamt so long a dream in the course of so short a night.

Anatole France
The good critic is one who tells of his mind's adventures among masterpieces.

Anatole France
Thinking that what he saw were men living under the natural law, and that the Lord had sent him to teach them the Divine law, he preached the gospel to them.

Anatole France
Mael, a scion of a royal family of Cambria, was sent in his ninth year to the Abbey of Yvern so that he might there study both sacred and profane learning. At the age of fourteen he renounced his patrimony and took a vow to serve the Lord. His time was divided, according to the rule, between the singing of hymns, the study of grammar, and the meditation of eternal truths.

Anatole France
The archangel Michael took supreme command. He reassured their minds by his serenity. His countenance, wherein his soul was visible, expressed contempt for danger.

Anatole France
The finest words in the world are only vain sounds, if you cannot comprehend them.

Anatole France
Touched by their attention, the holy man taught them the Gospel.
"Inhabitants of this island, the earthly day that has just risen over your rocks is the image of the heavenly day that rises in your souls. For I bring you the inner light; I bring you the light and heat of the soul. Just as the sun melts the ice of your mountains so Jesus Christ will melt the ice of your hearts."
Thus the old man spoke. As everywhere throughout nature voice calls to voice, as all which breathes in the light of day loves alternate strains, these penguins answered the old man by the sounds of their throats. And their voices were soft, for it was the season of their loves.

Anatole France
Irony is the gaiety of reflection and the joy of wisdom.

Anatole France
When the baptism of the penguins was known in Paradise, it caused neither joy nor sorrow, but an extreme surprise. The Lord himself was embarrassed. He gathered an assembly of clerics and doctors, and asked them whether they regarded the baptism as valid.

Anatole France
Drink! The flies have not spoilt my vintage; the vines were dry before they came.

Anatole France
For the moment the peril was nowhere and yet everywhere. The majority remained solid; but the leaders became stiff and exacting.

Anatole France
People who have no weaknesses are terrible; there is no way of taking advantage of them.

Anatole France
A throne, what is a throne? Is it four pieces of wood covered in velvet? No! A throne is a man, and that man is I!

Anatole France
The state is like the human body. Not all of its functions are dignified.

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

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

Anatole France
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