Anatole France Quotes
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You become a good writer just as you become a good joiner: by planing down your sentences.
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God, conquered, will become Satan; Satan, conquering, will become God. May the fates spare me this terrible lot; I love the Hell which formed my genius. I love the Earth where I have done some good, if it be possible to do any good in this fearful world where beings live but by rapine.
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We have drugs to make women speak, but none to keep them silent.
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Ugly women may be naturally quite as capricious as pretty ones; but as they are never petted and spoiled, and as no allowances are made for them, they soon find themselves obliged either to suppress their whims or to hide them.
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I am a physician. I keep a drug-shop of lies. I give relief, consolation. Can one console and relieve without lying? ... Only women and doctors know how necessary and how helpful lies are to men.
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Custom alone regulates morals.
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Change is the essence of life.
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Silence is the wit of fools.
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That child whose mother has never smiled upon him is worthy neither of the table of the gods nor the couch of the goddesses.
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The dog is a religious animal. In his savage state he worships the moon and the lights that float upon the waters. These are his gods to whom he appeals at night with long-drawn howls.
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It is remarkable how great an influence our clothes have on our moral state.
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When a history book contains no lies it is always tedious.
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It is only the poor who pay cash, and that not from virtue, but because they are refused credit.
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Do not try to satisfy your vanity by teaching a great many things. Awaken people's curiosity. It is enough to open minds; do not overload them. Put there just a spark. If there is some good inflammable stuff, it will catch fire.
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Dictionary: The universe in alphabetical order.
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To die for an idea is to set a rather high price upon conjecture.
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Universal peace will be realized, not because man will become better, but because a new order of things, a new science, new economic necessities, will impose peace.
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Our passions are ourselves.
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America, where thanks to Congress, there are forty million laws to enforce the Ten Commandments.
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The books that everybody admires are those that nobody reads.
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It is not easy to be a pretty woman without causing mischief.
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War will disappear only when men shall take no part whatever in violence and shall be ready to suffer every persecution that their abstention will bring them. It is the only way to abolish war.
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So long as society is founded on injustice, the function of the laws will be to defend injustice. And the more unjust they are the more respectable they will seem.
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There are very honest people who do not think that they have had a bargain unless they have cheated a merchant.
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Jealousy is a virtue of democracies which preserves them from tyrants.
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Truth possesses within herself a penetrating force, unknown alike to error and falsehood. I say 'truth' and you understand my meaning. For the beautiful words truth and justice need not to be defined in order to be understood in their true sense.
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The Future is hidden even from those who are forging it.
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It is good to collect things, but it is better to go on walks.
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Yet, every now and then, there would pass a young girl, slender, fair and desirable, arousing in young men a not ignoble desire to possess her, and stirring in old men regrets for ecstasy not seized and now forever past.
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In its majestic equality, the law forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets and steal loaves of bread.
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