Anatole France – 28 Quotes

28 Quotes by Anatole France

In art as in love, instinct is enough.

– Anatole France

Nine tenths of education is encouragement.

– Anatole France

To imagine is everything, to know is nothing at all.

– Anatole France

History books that contain no lies are extremely dull.

– Anatole France

Irony is the gaiety of reflection and the joy of wisdom.

– Anatole France

Lovers who love truly do not write down their happiness.

– Anatole France

Religion has done love a great service by making it a sin.

– Anatole France

I prefer the folly of enthusiasm to the indifference of wisdom.

– Anatole France

It is human nature to think wisely and act in an absurd fashion.

– Anatole France

Chance is perhaps the pseudonym of God when he did not want to sign.

– Anatole France

Until one has loved an animal a part of one’s soul remains unawakened.

– Anatole France

Nature has no principles. She makes no distinction between good and evil.

– Anatole France

An education which does not cultivate the will is an education that depraves the mind.

– Anatole France

We reproach people for talking about themselves but it is the subject they treat best.

– Anatole France

That man is prudent who neither hopes nor fears anything from the uncertain events of the future.

– Anatole France

To accomplish great things, we must not only act, but also dream not only plan, but also believe.

– Anatole France

The truth is that life is delicious, horrible, charming, frightful, sweet, bitter, and that is everything.

– Anatole France

Only men who are not interested in women are interested in women’s clothes. Men who like women never notice what they wear.

– Anatole France

The whole art of teaching is only the art of awakening the natural curiosity of young minds for the purpose of satisfying it afterwards.

– Anatole France

The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.

– Anatole France

You learn to speak by speaking, to study by studying, to run by running, to work by working in just the same way, you learn to love by loving.

– Anatole France

Suffering! We owe to it all that is good in us, all that gives value to life we owe to it pity, we owe to it courage, we owe to it all the virtues.

– Anatole France

No government ought to be without censors and where the press is free, no one ever will. Chance is the pseudonym of God when he did not want to sign.

– Anatole France

An education isn’t how much you have committed to memory, or even how much you know. It’s being able to differentiate between what you know and what you don’t.

– Anatole France

What can be more foolish than to think that all this rare fabric of heaven and earth could come by chance, when all the skill of art is not able to make an oyster!

– Anatole France

All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves we must die to one life before we can enter another.

– Anatole France

The poor have to labour in the face of the majestic equality of the law, which forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.

– Anatole France

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.

– Anatole France