Anatole France Quotes

Ignorance is the necessary condition, i do not say of happiness, but of life itself. If we knew everything, we could not endure existence a single hour. The sentiments that make it sweet to us, or at any rate tolerable, spring from a falsehood, and are fed on illusions.If, like God, a man possessed the truth, the sole and perfect truth, and once let it escape out of his hands, the world would be annihilated there and then, and the universe melt away instantly like a shadow.

The good critic is he who narrates the adventures of his soul among masterpieces.

Of all sexual aberrations, chastity is the strangest.

It is the certainty that they possess the truth that makes men cruel.

And the thing has been said and said well have no scruple. Take it and copy it.

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.

One must never lose time in vainly regretting the past or in complaining against the changes which cause us discomfort for change is the essence of life.

What we call happiness is what we do not know.

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.

I do not know any reading more easy more fascinating more delightful than a catalogue.

Man is so made that he can only find relaxation from one kind of labor by taking up another.

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

If fifty million people say a foolish thing it is still a foolish thing.

Suffering — how divine it is, how misunderstood! 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.

Time deals gently only with those who take it gently.