French Author Quotes

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

Time is a great ocean which, like the other ocean, overflows with our remains.

Alphonse de Lamartine

I know everything, but I don't understand any of it.

When one has one good day in the year, one is not wholly unfortunate.

Marguerite de Navarre

To go away is to die a little, it is to die to that which one loves: everywhere and always, one leaves behind a part of oneself.

Edmond Haraucourt

A good youth ought to have a fear of God, to be subject to his parents, to give honor to his elders, to preserve his purity; he ought not to despise humility, but should love forbearance and modesty. All these are an ornament to youthful years.

Poetry is the vision in a man's soul which he translates as best he can with all the means at his disposal.

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

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.

No one can be too talkative without often saying something that makes him look foolish, for the wise man's saying goes: "Whoever talks too much does himself a bad turn."

Chrétien de Troyes

How many have died without having given even one kiss to their chimera!

Théophile Gautier

To name an object is to take away three-fourths of the pleasure given by a poem. This pleasure consists in guessing little by little: to suggest it, that is the ideal.

Stéphane Mallarmé

How could an argument soothe or settle a controversy when every word is a nest for a bird of doubt? (meaning of words as inferences)

What colour are they now, thy quiet waters?
The evening star has brought the evening light,
And filled the river with the green hillside;
The hill-tops waver in the rippling water,
Trembles the absent vine and swells the grape
In thy clear crystal.

Ah, the whites! Their malignity and their omniscience—that was what made them terrifying!

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

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

Guillaume Apollinaire

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

In order to understand life it is not only necessary not to be indifferent to men, but not to be indifferent to flocks, to trees. One should be indifferent to nothing.

Remy de Gourmont

Gaily! gaily! close our ranks!
Arm! Advance!
Hope of France!
Gaily! gaily! close our ranks!
Onward! Onward! Gauls and Franks!

Pierre-Jean de Béranger

In principle, should the laborers have the produce of their labor? I do not hesitate to say: No! although I know that a multitude of workers will cry out. Look, proletarians, cry out, shout as much as you like, but then listen to me: No, it is not the product of their labors to which the workers have a right. It is the satisfaction of their needs, whatever the nature of those needs. To have the possession of the product of our labor is not to have possession of that which is proper to us, it is to have property in a product made by our hands, and which could be proper to others and not to us. And isn't all property theft?

Joseph Déjacque

Architecture is the simplest means of articulating time and space, of modulating reality, of engendering dreams.

Ivan Chtcheglov

I am God, says Love, for Love is God and God is Love, and this Soul is God by the condition of Love. I am God by divine nature and this Soul is God by the condition of Love. Thus this precious beloved of mine is taught and guided by me, without herself, for she is transformed into me, and such a perfect one, says Love, takes my nourishment.

Marguerite Porete

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

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

Giovanni Rucellai