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“Innocence most often is a good fortune and not a virtue.”
Anatole France
“Irony is the gaiety of reflection and the joy of wisdom.”
Anatole France
“Wandering re-establishes the original harmony which once existed between man and the universe.”
Anatole France
“There are very honest people who do not think that they have had a bargain unless they have cheated a merchant.”
Anatole France
“Silence is the wit of fools.”
Anatole France
“Lovers who love truly do not write down their happiness.”
Anatole France
“The truth is that life is delicious, horrible, charming, frightful, sweet, bitter, and that is everything.”
Anatole France
“It is better to understand little than to misunderstand a lot.”
Anatole France
“To imagine is everything, to know is nothing at all.”
Anatole France
“That man is prudent who neither hopes nor fears anything from the uncertain events of the future.”
Anatole France
“Existence would be intolerable if we were never to dream.”
Anatole France
“The good critic is he who relates the adventures of his soul among masterpieces.”
Anatole France
“Devout believers are safeguarded in a high degree against the risk of certain neurotic illnesses; their acceptance of the universal neurosis spares them the task of constructing a personal one.”
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
“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
“I thank fate for having made me born poor. Poverty taught me the true value of the gifts useful to life.”
Anatole France
“If a million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing.”
Anatole France
“Nature has no principles. She makes no distinction between good and evil.”
Anatole France
“It is human nature to think wisely and act in an absurd fashion.”
Anatole France
“The average man does not know what to do with this life, yet wants another one which will last forever.”
Anatole France
“An education which does not cultivate the will is an education that depraves the mind.”
Anatole France
“One thing above all gives charm to men's thoughts, and this is unrest. A mind that is not uneasy irritates and bores me.”
Anatole France
“Ignorance and error are necessary to life, like bread and water.”
Anatole France
“Chance is perhaps the pseudonym of God when he did not want to sign.”
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
“When a thing has been said and well, have no scruple. Take it and copy it.”
Anatole France
“We reproach people for talking about themselves; but it is the subject they treat best.”
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
“Never lend books, for no one ever returns them; the only books I have in my library are books that other folks have left me.”
Anatole France
“The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself a fool.”
Anatole France
