Anatole France

I thank fate for having made me born poor. Poverty taught me the true value of the gifts useful to life.

The books that everybody admires are those that nobody reads.

Wandering re-establishes the original harmony which once existed between man and the universe.

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

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.

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

What frightens us most in a madman is his sane conversation.

Ignorance and error are necessary to life like bread and water.

Without lies humanity would perish of despair and boredom.

Nine tenths of education is encouragement.

There are very honest people who do not think that they have had a bargain unless they have cheated a merchant.

If the path be beautiful let us not ask where it leads.

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.

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.

Silence is the wit of fools.

It is well for the heart to be naive and the mind not to be.

The fool doth think he is wise but the wise man knows himself a fool.

Of all the ways of defining man the worst is the one which makes him out to be a rational animal.

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.

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.

The average man does not know what to do with this life yet wants another one which will last forever.

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.

History books that contain no lies are extremely dull.

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

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

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

To imagine is everything to know is nothing at all.

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

Innocence most often is a good fortune and not a virtue.

It is only the poor who pay cash and that not from virtue but because they are refused credit.

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

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!

One thing above all gives charm to men's thoughts and this is unrest. A mind that is not uneasy irritates and bores me.

Existence would be intolerable if we were never to dream.

Lovers who love truly do not write down their happiness.

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

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

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

It is better to understand little than to misunderstand a lot.

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

In art as in love instinct is enough.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

We do not know what to do with this short life yet we want another which will be eternal.

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

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

A person is never happy except at the price of some ignorance.

Of all the sexual aberrations chastity is the strangest.

When a thing has been said and well have no scruple. Take it and copy it.

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

The greatest virtue of man is perhaps curiosity.

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.