Émile Chartier Quotes

33 Sourced Quotes

May the Gods, if they did not die of boredom, never give you one of those flat kingdoms to govern; may lead you through mountain paths; may they give you for a companion a good Andalusian mule with eyes like wells, a brow like an anvil, and who stops dead in his tracks because he sees the shadow his ears make on the road in front of him.

Émile Chartier
When we speak, in gestures or signs, we fashion a real object in the world; the gesture is seen, the words and the song are heard. The arts are simply a kind of writing, which, in one way or another, fixes words or gestures, and gives body to the invisible.

Émile Chartier
Work is the best and worst of all things; the best of it is voluntary, the worst of it is servile.

Émile Chartier
Aristotle's pupil already realized that we have no power at all over our passions as long as we do not know their true causes. Many men have refuted fear, and with sound arguments. But a man who is afraid does not listen to arguments; he listens to the beating of his heart and the pulsating of his blood.

Émile Chartier
We prove anything we want to prove, and the real difficulty is to know what we want to prove.

Émile Chartier
It is the human condition to question one god after another, one appearance after another, or better, one apparition after another, always pursuing the truth of the imagination, which is not the same as the truth of appearance.

Émile Chartier
Each one gave the other the only assistance one man can expect from another: that his friend support him and ask only that he remain himself. It is no great accomplishment to take people as they are, and we must always do so eventually, but to wish them to be as they are, that is a genuine love.

Émile Chartier
Thought is saying no, and it is to itself that thought says no.

Émile Chartier
Everybody continually tries to get away with as much as he can; and society is a marvelous machine which allows decent people to be cruel without realizing it.

Émile Chartier
It is clear that in mulling over harsh judgments, sinister predictions, and bad memories, we fashion our own sadness; in a certain sense, we savor it.

Émile Chartier
Man himself is an enigma in motion; his questions never stay asked; whereas the mold, the footprint, and by natural extension, the statue itself, like the vaults, the arches, the temples with which man records his own passing, remain immobile and fix a moment of man's life, upon which one might endlessly meditate.

Émile Chartier
In short, the important thing is to get started. No matter how; then there will be time to ask yourself where you are going.

Émile Chartier
When people ask me if the division between parties of the right and parties of the left, men of the right and men of the left, still makes sense, the first thing that comes to mind is that the person asking the question is certainly not a man of the left.

Émile Chartier
Untie, liberate, and do not be afraid. He who is free is disarmed.

Émile Chartier
An author of antiquity said that every event has two handles, and that, in order to carry it, there is no sense in choosing the one that hurts the hand.

Émile Chartier
Every boat is copied from another boat... Let's reason as follows in the manner of Darwin. It is clear that a very badly made boat will end up at the bottom after one or two voyages, and thus never be copied... One could then say, with complete rigor, that it is the sea herself who fashions the boats, choosing those which function and destroying the others.

Émile Chartier
We are advised and led along by second-rate moralists who only know how to work themselves into a delirium and pass their illness onto others.

Émile Chartier
When the pack is out hunting, the dogs do not fight among themselves.

Émile Chartier
Every menial condition is bearable as long as one can exercise authority over one's work and be assured that the job is permanent.

Émile Chartier
Politeness is for people toward whom we feel indifferent, and moods, both good and bad, are for those we love.

Émile Chartier
Our errors perish before we do. Let's not mummify them and keep them around.

Émile Chartier
It is very true that we ought to think of the happiness of others; but it is not often enough said that the best thing we can do for those who love us is to be happy ourselves.

Émile Chartier
Any kind of barbarism, once established, will last.

Émile Chartier
If religion is only human, and its form is man's form, it follows that everything in religion is true.

Émile Chartier
Nothing is more dangerous than an idea, when you have only one idea.

Émile Chartier
Happiness is a reward that comes to those that have not looked for it.

Émile Chartier
Idleness is the mother of all vices, but also of all virtues.

Émile Chartier
Certainly thinking is pleasant, but the pleasure of thinking must be subordinated to the art of making decisions.

Émile Chartier
As opposed to the incoherent spectacle of the world, the real is what is expected, what is obtained and what is discovered by our own movement. It is what is sensed as being within our own power and always responsive to our action.

Émile Chartier
Never be insolent unless it is a deliberate decision, and only toward a man more powerful than yourself.

Émile Chartier