French Novelist Quotes

Victor Hugo

Jules Verne

Alexandre Dumas

Colette

Émile Zola

Gustave Flaubert

Alphonse Daudet

For, to make deserts, God, who rules mankind, Begins with kings, and ends the work by wind.

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.

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

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.

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

Georges Courteline

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

Delphine de Vigan

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.

Ah; but my courage fails me, and my heart is sick within me! —Lord, take pity on the Christian who doubts, on the skeptic who would fain believe, on the galley-slave of life who puts to sea alone, in the darkness of night, beneath a firmament illumined no longer by the consoling beacon-fires of the ancient hope.

Joris-Karl Huysmans

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

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

Maurice Barrès

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 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.

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

Marcel Jouhandeau

Fear made the gods; audacity has made kings.

Claude Prosper Jolyot de Crébillon

The madness of the eyes is the lure of the abyss. Sirens lurk in the dark depths of the pupils as they lurk at the bottom of the sea, that I know for sure - but I have never encountered them, and I am searching still for the profound and plaintive gazes in whose depths I might be able, like Hamlet redeemed, to drown the Ophelia of my desire.

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

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.

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

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

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

Success, which is not always a proof of merit, depends more often on the choice of a subject than on its execution.

Pierre Choderlos de Laclos