A collection of some of the most witty and ironic quotes from French poet and novelist Anatole France.
Best Anatole France Quotes
Anatole France (1844-1924) was a French poet, novelist, and journalist. He is best known for his works such as The Red Lily, Thais, and The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard.
France’s writing often dealt with social and political themes, and he was known for his wit, irony, and satirical style. He was a vocal critic of organized religion and political oppression, and his work often challenged established ideas and institutions.
Anatole France was a member of the French Academy and received several awards and honors for his writing, including the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1921.
Famous Quotes By Anatole France
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.
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!
They did not fear men, for they did not know them, and had never received any harm from them; and there was in the monk a certain gentleness that reassured the most timid animals and that pleased these penguins extremely.
Quotes From Anatole France
The first virtue of all really great men is that they are sincere. They eradicate hypocrisy from their hearts.
The future is a convenient place for dreams.
The books that everybody admires are those that nobody reads.
Good angels are fallible – they sin every day and fall from Heaven like flies.
Nature, in her indifference, makes no distinction between good and evil.
An education which does not cultivate the will is an education that depraves the mind.
Well Known Quotes Anatole France
In its majestic equality, the law forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets and steal loaves of bread.
A person is never happy except at the price of some ignorance.
The good critic is one who tells of his mind’s adventures among masterpieces.
For the majority of people, though they do not know what to do with this life, long for another that shall have no end.
True education is the ability to discern the difference between what you do know and what you don’t.
The books are the opium of the West.
He flattered himself on being a man without any prejudices; and this pretension itself is a very great prejudice.
Man is so made that he can only find relaxation from one kind of labor by taking up another.
A dictionary is merely the universe arranged in alphabetical order.
It is human nature to think wisely and to act in an absurd fashion.
Christianity has done a lot for love by making it a sin.
In art as in love , instinct is enough.
To accomplish great things we must not only act, but also dream; not only plan, but also believe.
Only men who are not interested in women are interested in women’s clothes. Men who like women never notice what they wear.
All the historical books which contain no lies are extremely tedious.
I prefer the errors of enthusiasm to the wisdom of indifference.
It is well for the heart to be naïve and for the mind not to be.
Stupidity is far more dangerous than evil, for evil takes a break from time to time, stupidity does not.
Man is a rational animal. He can think up a reason for anything he wants to believe.
If the path be beautiful, let us not ask where it leads.
If fifty million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing.
We have never heard the devil’s side of the story, God wrote all the book.
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.
A woman without breasts is like a bed without pillows.
Intelligent women always marry fools.
I thank fate for having made me born poor. Poverty taught me the true value of the gifts useful to life.
People who have no weaknesses are terrible; there is no way of taking advantage of them.
Innocence most often is a good fortune and not a virtue.
You become a good writer just as you become a good joiner: by planing down your sentences.
The Kingdom of Heaven is a military autocracy and there is no public opinion in it.
It’s not by amusing oneself that one learns.
Until one has loved an animal, a part of one’s soul remains unawakened.
Never lend books, for no one ever returns them; the only books I have in my library are books that other folks have lent me.
We chase dreams and embrace shadows.
All the good writers of confessions, from Augustine onwards, are men who are still a little in love with their sins.
Lists of Quotes
- Quotes by Ambrose Bierce
- Quotes by Alfred North Whitehead
- Quotes by Alexandre Dumas
- Quotes by Aldous Huxley From Brave New World And Other Works