French Novelist Quotes

Victor Hugo

Jules Verne

Alexandre Dumas

Colette

Émile Zola

Gustave Flaubert

Alphonse Daudet

It is better to waste one's youth than to do nothing with it at all.

Georges Courteline

The physician has a sacred mission on earth; and to fulfill it he begins at the source of life, and goes down to the mysterious darkness of the tomb.

Alexandre Dumas

The distance between the earth and her satellite is a mere trifle, and undeserving of serious consideration. I am convinced that before twenty years are over one-half of our earth will have paid a visit to the moon.

So now, whenever I despair, I no longer expect my end, but some bit of luck, some commonplace little miracle which, like a glittering link, will mend again the necklace of my days.

We know that the nature of genius is to provide idiots with ideas twenty years later.

The history of men is reflected in the history of sewers.

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

One reproaches a lover, but can one reproach a husband, when his only fault is that he no longer loves?

Madame de La Fayette

The politician is an acrobat; he keeps his balance by doing the opposite of what he says.

Maurice Barrès

The moon of a bright silver, which dazzles by its shining, illumines a world which surely is no longer ours; for it resembles in nothing what may be seen in other lands.

If they do only one jump, you know, there's a fifty percent chance of an injury. Two jumps it's eighty percent. The third time, it's dead certain they won't get off Scot free. You see? It's not a question of training, but the law of averages.

Some secrets are like fossils and the stone has become too heavy to turn over.

Delphine de Vigan

The fatal mistake we make is looking for a paradise that endures...This obsession with what lasts causes us to overlook many a fleeting paradise.

The strong ones among humans do nothing. They talk and talk again.

How can a man who has once strayed into Heaven ever hope to make terms with the earth!

In this world, you must be a bit too kind in order to be kind enough.

Pierre de Marivaux

To really know someone is to have loved and hated him in turn.

Marcel Jouhandeau

Only experience or example can rationally determine which way the heart should incline. Now experience is not an advantage that it is open to everyone to acquire, since it depends on the various situations in which, by chance, we find ourselves. For many people, then, this leaves only example that can offer any guidance as to how they should exercise virtue.

Antoine François Prévost

Classical education has deformed everything, and has imposed upon us as geniuses men of correct, facile talent, who follow the beaten track.

Mutual content is like a river, which must have its banks on either side.

Alain-René Lesage

Okay, I'm flattered, I appreciate your attempt at making me feel better after the fiasco with the pita rolls, but please ring up this beer I need it more than flattery.

Amanda Filipacchi

He hated the war; it threatened much more than his lifestyle or peace of mind. It continually destroyed the world of the imagination, the only world where he felt happy.

Irène Némirovsky

The Arctic Ocean encircles with a belt of eternal ice the desert confines of Siberia and North America--the uttermost limits of the Old and New worlds, separated by the narrow, channel, known as Behring's Straits.

All my life I have been favored by incredible luck. It would take too long to enumerate all of the occasions...

Our rages, daughters of despair, creep and squirm like worms. Prayer is the only form of revolt which remains upright.

Georges Bernanos