Jean Anouilh Quotes

40 Sourced Quotes

Until the day of his death, no man can be sure of his courage.

Jean Anouilh
It takes a certain courage and a certain greatness to be truly base.

Jean Anouilh
But one cannot weep for the entire world. It is beyond human strength. One must choose.

Jean Anouilh
There is love of course. And then there's life, its enemy.

Jean Anouilh
The spring is wound up tight. It will uncoil of itself. That is what is so convenient in tragedy. The least little turn of the wrist will do the job. Anything will set it going.

Jean Anouilh
God is on everyone's side…And, in the last analysis, he is on the side of those with plenty of money and large armies.

Jean Anouilh
Every man thinks God is on his side. The rich and powerful know he is.

Jean Anouilh
Tragedy is restful: and the reason is that hope, that foul, deceitful thing, has no part in it.

Jean Anouilh
Poor little men, poor little cocks! As soon as they're old enough, they swell their plumage to be conquerors... If they only knew that it's enough to be just a little bit wounded and sad in order to obtain everything without fighting for it.

Jean Anouilh
The object of art is to give life a shape, and to do it by every conceivable artifice.

Jean Anouilh
To say yes, you have to sweat and roll up your sleeves and plunge both hands into life up to the elbows.

Jean Anouilh
Life is a wonderful thing to talk about, or to read about in history books - but it is terrible when one has to live it.

Jean Anouilh
Everything ends this way in France. Weddings, christenings, duels, burials, swindlings, affairs of state—everything is a pretext for a good dinner.

Jean Anouilh
All prisons are brimming over with innocence. It is those who cram their fellows into them, in the name of empty ideas, who are the only guilty ones.

Jean Anouilh
Death has to be waiting at the end of the ride before you truly see the earth, and feel your heart, and love the world.

Jean Anouilh
All children are sweet at five. But at twelve they begin to get silly.

Jean Anouilh
Beauty, real beauty, is something very grave. If there is a God, He must be partly that.

Jean Anouilh
My wife was an opera singer, you know. She bellowed her way through Wagner as a Valkyrie. I married her and made her give up the theatre, to my eternal cost. She was to go on acting for myself alone. A performance at his own expense, lasting for more than twenty years, tends to wear out your spectator.

Jean Anouilh
We have found other terms far less vague than the old ones to designate the same complaints. It's a great advance linguistically.

Jean Anouilh
One can be a patriot, you know, without making one's wife join the breadline.

Jean Anouilh
One can make one's life a complete misery, worrying about burglaries and shipwrecks, but ask anyone, anyone you know... earth-shattering disasters and fabulous inheritances all seems to take place exclusively in the newspapers.

Jean Anouilh
And under this carnival disguise the heart of an old youngster who is still waiting to give his all. But how to be recognized under this mask? This is what they call a fine career.

Jean Anouilh
It bothered me that whatever was waiting wasn't waiting for me

Jean Anouilh
To die is nothing. Begin by living. It's less funny and lasts longer.

Jean Anouilh
Life is very nice, but it lacks form. It's the aim of art to give it some.

Jean Anouilh
You know very well that love is, above all, the gift of oneself!

Jean Anouilh
Dying is nothing. So start by living. It's less fun and it lasts longer.

Jean Anouilh
However tight I shut my eyes, there will always be a stray dog somewhere in the world who'll stop me being happy.

Jean Anouilh
Nobody has a more sacred obligation to obey the law than those who make the law.

Jean Anouilh
It is restful, tragedy, because one knows that there is no more lousy hope left. You know you're caught, caught at last like a rat with all the world on its back. And the only thing left to do is shout – not moan, or complain, but yell out at the top of your voice.

Jean Anouilh