French Author Quotes

Friendship is dead:
They were friends who go with the wind,
And the wind was blowing at my door.

Some people measure the worth of good actions only by their natural qualities or their difficulty, given the preference to what is conspicuous or brilliant... The dignity and difficulty of a good action certainly affects what is technically called its accidental worth, but all its essential worth comes from love alone.

Jean-Pierre Camus

DeMaistre and Bonald … wanted to teach men submission, to give them the religion of established power, to substitute, in Bonald's phrase, the evidence of authority for the authority of evidence.

Alain Finkielkraut

Naught else but empty shadows are our dreams,
Reflected from the day's imaginings.

Giovanni Rucellai

When liberty, this austere goddess,
Comes down to console people on earth;
That she finds them seated, in their heavy troubles,
On a ground cracked a thousand and four hundred years ago,
Her work which everywhere encounters a rebellious ground
Is very laborious before emerging beautiful

Auguste-Marseille Barthélemy

I have so fiercely dreamed of you And walked so far and spoken of you so, Loved a shade of you so hard That now I've no more left of you.

I always have a pad of paper and a pencil within reach, to catch on the wing this turn of phrase which strikes me as felicitous, that idea which I hope to be able to examine more closely in the light of day.

Roger Martin du Gard

They flattered the ambitious and all the ills came gradually to a head. Murder drowning everything was allowed. Intriguers monopolised all the offices. Good men could only mutter for if they spoke they were lost. Hatred vengeance everything was permitted and nobody dared open his mouth...

Jacques-Louis Ménétra

Twentieth pupil of the centuries knows its stuff and bird-changed this century like Jesus climbs the sky.

Guillaume Apollinaire

Don't forget that I cannot see myself, that my role is limited to being the one who looks in the mirror.

The good effect of Fortune may be short-lived. To build on it is to build on sand.

Honorat de Bueil de Racan

There is only one proper way to wear a beautiful dress: to forget you are wearing it.

Delphine de Girardin

I die of thirst beside the fountain
I'm hot as fire, I'm shaking tooth on tooth
In my own country I'm in a distant land
Beside the blaze I'm shivering in flames

François Villon

What makes equality such a difficult business is that we only want it with our superiors.

A man without wine
Would be dull as a fly
And shortly would die

Pierre Beaumarchais

Take love as a sober man takes wine; do not become a drunkard. If your mistress is sincere and faithful, love her for that; but if she is not, if she is merely young and beautiful, love her for that; if she is agreeable and spirituelle, love her for that; if she is none of these things but merely loves you, love her for that. Love does not come to us every day.

Alfred de Musset

Yet this is the watch by night.
Let us all accept new strength, and
real tenderness. And at dawn, armed
with glowing patience, we will enter
the cities of glory.

Expensive clothes with inappropriate or inexpensive shoes may send an unflattering message.

Mireille Guiliano

In the beds which the piety of the public has prepared on every side, stricken men await the verdict of fate.

Georges Duhamel

In times gone by there lived a Count of Ponthieu, who loved chivalry and the pleasures of the world beyond measure, and moreover was a stout knight and a gallant gentleman

Marie de France

Whoever has but a moment to live has nothing more to hide.

Philippe Quinault

O Richard! O my king!
The universe forsakes thee!

Michel-Jean Sedaine

Medicine is a rich soil but it doesn't yield its harvest unaided.

Youth is the time to study wisdom; old age is the time to practice it.

Jean-Baptiste Rousseau

I sit beside my lonely fire
And pray for wisdom yet:
For calmness to remember
Or courage to forget.

Charles Hamilton Aide