French Author Quotes

Ingratitude calls forth reproaches as gratitude brings renewed kindnesses.

Marie de Rabutin-Chantal

Anarchism is really a synonym for socialism. The anarchist is primarily a socialist whose aim is to abolish the exploitation of man by man. Anarchism is only one of the streams of socialist thought, that stream whose main components are concern for liberty and haste to abolish the State.

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

A single nation that has succeeded in lowering the intelligence, the morality, the quality of the human race almost throughout the globe is a phenomenon never before experienced since the beginning of time. I accuse the United States of being in a constant state of crime against humanity.

Henry de Montherlant

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

Guillaume Apollinaire

The artist is the compass which, through the raging of the storm, points steadily to the north.

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

There is no power in nature which from nothing could have made the universe, and none which could reduce the universe to nothing:

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

Giovanni Rucellai

Segu is a garden where cunning grows. Segu is built on treachery. Speak of Segu outside Segu, but do not speak of Segu in Segu.

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

Honorat de Bueil de Racan

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

Nothing is small or great in God's sight. Whatever He wills becomes great to us, however seemingly trifling; and if once the voice of conscience tells us that He requires anything of us, we have no right to measure its importance.

Our fate is shaped from within ourselves outward, never from without inward.

Jacques Lusseyran

A tainted society has invented psychiatry to defend itself against the investigations of certain superior intellects whose faculties of divination would be troublesome.

No man has ever yet discovered the way to give friendly advice to any woman, not even to his own wife.

Honoré de Balzac

Father died last year. I don't subscribe to the theory by which we only become truly adult when our parents die; we never become truly adult.

Michel Houellebecq

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

Jean-Baptiste Rousseau

And so I leave
On cruel winds
Squalling
And gusting me
Like a dead leaf
Falling.

We may finally ask ourselves whether coincidence really does exist. Maybe everybody we run into is walking around near us with the undying hope of meeting us? To think of it, it's a fact that they often seem out of breath.

David Foenkinos

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

Charles Hamilton Aide

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

Everything interesting takes place in the dark; there is no doubt about it. We know nothing of the true story of the men. ―

Louis-Ferdinand Céline

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

Philippe Quinault

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.