Quotes by French Authors - Page 19

Most people willingly deceive themselves with a doubly false faith; they believe in eternal memory (of men, things, deeds, peoples) and in rectification (of deeds, errors, sins, injustice). Both are sham. The truth lies at the opposite end of the scale: everything will be forgotten and nothing will be rectified. All rectification (both vengeance and forgiveness) will be taken over by oblivion.
Milan Kundera
The origin of illness may be in the past, but the virulent crisis must be dynamically tackled. I believe in attacking the core of the illness, through its present symptoms, quickly, directly. The past is a labyrinth. One does not have to step into it and move step by step through every turn and twist. The past reveals itself instantly, in today’s fever or abscess of the soul.
Anaïs Nin
One is not born a genius one becomes a genius.
Simone de Beauvoir
The worst possible outlook is indifference that says, “I can’t do anything about it; I’ll just get by.” Behaving like that deprives you of one of the essentials of being human: the capacity and the freedom to feel outraged. That freedom is indispensable, as is the political involvement that goes with it.
Stéphane Hessel
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.
Anatole France
Courage is as often the outcome of despair as of hope in the one case we have nothing to lose in the other everything to gain.
Diane de Poitiers
The fact that the crime and the punishment were related and bound up in the form of atrocity was not the result of some obscurely accepted law of retaliation. It was the effect, in the rites of punishment, of a certain mechanism of power: of a power that not only did not hesitate to exert itself directly on bodies, but was exalted and strengthened by its visible manifestations; of a power that asserted itself as an armed power whose functions of maintaining order were not entirely unconnected with the functions of war; of a power that presented rules and obligations as personal bonds, a breach of which constituted an offence and called for vengeance; of a power for which disobedience was an act of hostility, the first sign of rebellion, which is not in principle different from civil war; of a power that had to demonstrate not why it enforced its laws, but who were its enemies, and what unleashing of force threatened them; of a power which, in the absence of continual supervision, sought a renewal of its effect in the spectacle of its individual manifestations; of a power that was recharged in the ritual display of its reality as 'super-power'.
Michel Foucault
It doesn’t extinguish the fire with ice. (On n’éteint pas le feu - Avec des glaçons.)
Charles de Leusse
Evil is committed without effort, naturally, fatally; goodness is always the product of some art.
Charles Baudelaire
Nature creates unity even in the parts of a whole.
Eugène Delacroix
So the nymphs they spoke,we kissed and laid.By noontime’s hourour love was made.Like braided chains of crocus stems,we lay entwined, I laid with them.Our breath, one glassy, tideless sea,our bodies draping wearily,we slept, I slept so lucidly,with hopes to stay this memory.
Roman Payne
I have always thought that great artists were those who dared to confer the right of beauty on things so natural that people say on seeing them, "Why did I never realize before that that was beautiful too?
André Gide
If perchance a friend should betray you; if he forms a subtle plot to get hold of what is yours; if people should try to spread evil reports about you, would you tamely submit to all this without flying into a rage?
Molière
I am a mediocre being, a bit cunning.
Renée Vivien
All told, over the period 1932-1980, nearly half a century, the top federal income tax rate in the United States averaged 81 percent.
Thomas Piketty
I walk firmer and more secure up hill than down.
Michel de Montaigne
Children have more need of models than of critics.
Joseph Joubert
I could do with a bit more excess. From now on I'm going to be immoderate--and volatile--I shall enjoy loud music and lurid poetry. I shall be rampant.
Joanne Harris
Life is spent hovering round our tomb. Our various sicknesses are but the winds which carry us more or less near to the haven. … Death is our friend, nevertheless we do not recognise it as such, because it presents itself to us under a mask, and that mask inspires us with terror.
Francois Rene De Chateaubriand
I transform "Work" in its analytic meaning (the Work of Mourning, the Dream-Work) into the real "Work" - of writing.
Roland Barthes
There is a time for work, and a time for love. That leaves no other time.
Coco Chanel
External conflicts we can avoid, resolve, or manage. But, when it comes to internal conflicts, there is only one viable option: resolve. Whatever internal conflict, major or minor, we don't resolve will grate within us nonstop. Fortunately, we can resolve all our internal conflicts with one simple strategy: Act the way it feels right, no matter how inconvenient the consequences are.
Indrajit Garai
Many people see happiness only in their future.
François Lelord
One should let one's nails grow for a fortnight. O, how sweet it is to drag brutally from his bed a child with no hair on his upper lip and with wide open eyes, make as if to touch his forehead gently with one's hand and run one's fingers through his beautiful hair. Then suddenly, when he is least expecting it, to dig one's long nails into his soft breast, making sure, though, that one does not kill him; for if he died, one would not later be able to contemplate his agonies. Then one drinks his blood as one licks his wounds; and during this time, which ought to last for eternity, the child weeps.
Comte de Lautréamont
Melancholy is the happiness of being sad.
Victor Hugo
It was only much later that he was made flesh and blood [in the Gospels] on paper. Thus Christ was created as a literary creation.
Paul Louis Couchoud
Eternal snows are at the top. Eyes of beautiful are at the top. (Neiges éternelles sont au sommet. - Yeux de la belle sont au sommet.)
Charles de Leusse
his conscience washed clean by happiness.
Françoise Sagan
I would say, if you like, that the party is like an out-moded mathematics...that is to say, the mathematics of Euclid. We need to invent a non-Euclidian mathematics with respect to political discipline.
Alain Badiou
Let us not be needlessly bitter: certain failures are sometimes fruitful.
E. M. Cioran
Politeness is the art of choosing among your thoughts.
Germaine de Staël
Humor (is) the process that allows one to brush reality aside when it gets too distressing.
André Breton
Speak gently but look out for your rights.
Christine de Pizan
Who underestimates is buried in the optimism of the deads. (Qui sous-estime s'enterre - Dans l'optimisme des morts.)
Charles de Leusse
The very essence of politeness is to take care that by our words and actions we make other people pleased with us as well as with themselves.
Jean de La Bruyère
My aunt must have been perfectly well aware that she would not see Swann again, that she would never leave her own house any more, but this ultimate seclusion seemed to be accepted by her with all the more readiness for the very reason which, to our minds, ought to have made it more unbearable; namely, that such a seclusion was forced upon her by the gradual and steady diminution in her strength which she was able to measure daily, which, by making every action, every movement 'tiring' to her if not actually painful, gave to inaction, isolation and silence the blessed, strengthening and refreshing charm of repose.
Marcel Proust
Is it that we pretend to a reformation? Truly, no: but it may be we are more addicted to Venus than our fathers were. They are two exercises that thwart and hinder one another in their vigor. Lechery weakens our stomach on the one side; and on the other sobriety renders us more spruce and amorous for the exercise of love.
Michel de Montaigne
Rich will be my life if I can keep my memories full and brimming, and record them on clear-eyed mornings while I set joyously to work setting pen to holy craft.
Roman Payne
When I see the blind and wretched state of men, when I survey the whole universe in its deadness, and man left to himself with no light, as though lost in this corner of the universe without knowing who put him there, what he has to do, or what will become of him when he dies, incapable of knowing anything, I am moved to terror, like a man transported in his sleep to some terrifying desert island, who wakes up quite lost, with no means of escape. Then I marvel that so wretched a state does not drive people to despair.
Blaise Pascal
Aures habent et non audient` - `They have ears but hear not
Jules Verne
Life is a comedy to those who think, a tragedy to those who feel.
Jean Racine
I do not mean, of course, that we can always accurately express our conscious thoughts with Proustian accuracy. Consciousness overflows language: we perceive vastly more than we can describe.
Stanislas Dehaene
Everyone calls himself a friend, but only a fool relies on it: nothing is commoner than the name, nothing rarer than the thing.
Jean de La Fontaine
But in the machine of today we forget that motors are whirring: the motor, finally, has come to fulfill its function, which is to whirr as a heart beats - and we give no thought to the beating of our heart. Thus, precisely because it is perfect the machine dissembles its own existence instead of forcing itself upon our notice.
Antoine De Saint Exupery
If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things.
René Descartes
When there is no other aim but to outstrip constantly the point arrived at, how painful to be thrown back!...Since imagination is hungry for novelty, and ungoverned, it gropes at random
Émile Durkheim
A life spent waiting for your paycheck, measured out in work hours...A lifetime spent buying everything retail while selling oneself wholesale - L'amour Existe (1960)
Maurice Pialat
But walking causes absorption. Walking interminably, taking in through your pores the height of the mountains when you are confronting them at length, breathing in the shape of the hills for hours at a time during a slow descent. The body becomes steeped in the earth it treads. And thus, gradually, it stops being in the landscape: it becomes the landscape. That doesn’t have to mean dissolution, as if the walker were fading away to become a mere inflection, a footnote. It’s more a flashing moment: sudden flame, time catching fire. And here, the feeling of eternity is all at once that vibration between presences. Eternity, here, in a spark.
Frédéric Gros
Come to the edge, He said.They said: We are afraid.Come to the edge, He said.They came. He pushed them,And they flew . . ."— Guillaume ApollinairetFrench poet
Guillaume Apollinaire
Ethics is the triumph of freedom over facticity.
Simone de Beauvoir
God created through love and for love. God did not create anything except love itself, and the means to love. He created love in all its forms. He created beings capable of love from all possible distances. Because no other could do it, he himself went to the greatest possible distance, the infinite distance. This infinite distance between God and God, this supreme tearing apart, this agony beyond all others, this marvel of love, is the crucifixion. Nothing can be further from God than that which has been made accursed.
Simone Weil
The key to wisdom is this -- constant and frequent questioning ... for by doubting we are led to question and by questioning we arrive at the truth.
Pierre Abélard
He who lives without folly is not as wise as he may think.
François de La Rochefoucauld
I have only made this letter longer because I have not had the time to make it sho
Blaise Pascal
In the beginning God created man in His own image, and man has been trying to repay the favor ever since.
Voltaire
On coming out of the chapel, a well can be seen on the left. There are two in this yard. You ask, Why is there no bucket and no pulley to this one? Because no water is drawn from it now. Why is no more water drawn from it? Because it is full of skeletons.
Victor Hugo
Among the mutations that have affected the knowledge of things ... only one, which began a century and a half ago ... has allowed the figure of man to appear.
Michel Foucault
Every ideal comes from us as do all the amenities of life, in order to make our existence as simple reproducers, for which divine Providence solely intended us, less monotonous and less hard.
Guy de Maupassant
If you're sad, add more lipstick and attack!
Coco Chanel
In periods when shallow speculation is rife, one might think that metaphysics would shine forth, at least, by the brilliance of its modest reserve. But the very age that is unaware of the majesty of metaphysics, likewise overlooks its poverty. Its majesty? It is wisdom. Its poverty? It is human science.
Jacques Maritain