Anatole France's Quotes

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

Without lies humanity would perish of despair and boredom.

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 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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

In art as in love, instinct is enough.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

To imagine is everything, to know is nothing at all.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

It is by acts and not by ideas that people live.

Lovers who love truly do not write down their happiness.

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

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

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

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

A man is already halfway in love with any woman who listens to him.

At the innermost core of all loneliness is a deep and powerful yearning for union with one's lost self.

A quotation in a speech, article or book is like a rifle in the hands of an infantryman. It speaks with authority.

Inspirations never go in for long engagements; they demand immediate marriage to action.

No yesterdays are ever wasted for those who give themselves to today.

No man can discover his own talents.

Every man, through fear, mugs his aspirations a dozen times a day.

If you accept your limitations you go beyond them.

If you greatly desire something, have the guts to stake everything on obtaining it.

What an author likes to write most is his signature on the back of a cheque.

The prospect of success in achieving our most cherished dream is not without its terrors. Who is more deprived and alone than the man who has achieved his dream?

If one of two lovers is loyal, and the other jealous and false, how may their friendship last, for Love is slain!

For above all things Love means sweetness, and truth, and measure; yea, loyalty to the loved one and to your word. And because of this I dare not meddle with so high a matter.

The fool shouts loudly, thinking to impress the world.

Great were the lamentation and the cry when the news of this mischance was noised about the city. Such a tumult of mourning was never before heard, for the whole city was moved.

There are divers men who make a great show of loyalty, and pretend to such discretion in the hidden things they hear, that at the end folk come to put faith in them.

Be sure that you speak with unfeigned lips.

But sweetly and discreetly love passes from person to person, from heart to heart, or it is nothing worth.

He who would tell divers tales must know how to vary the tune.

I love no woman, for love is a serious business, not a jest.

Out of five hundred who speak glibly of love, not one can spell the first letter of his name.

The dead and past stories that I have told again in divers fashions, are not set down without authority.

Whosoever counts these Lays as fable, may be assured that I am not of his mind.

Fairest and dearest, your wrath and anger are more heavy than I can bear; but learn that I cannot tell what you wish me to say without sinning against my honour too grievously.

For what the lover would, that would the beloved; what she would ask of him that should he go before to grant. Without accord such as this, love is but a bond and a constraint.

Now will I rehearse before you a very ancient Breton Lay. As the tale was told to me, so, in turn, will I tell it over again, to the best of my art and knowledge. Hearken now to my story, its why and its reason.

Just as we reject racism, sexism, ageism, and heterosexism, we reject speciesism. The species of a sentient being is no more reason to deny the protection of this basic right than race, sex, age, or sexual orientation is a reason to deny membership in the human moral community to other humans.

Michael Vick may enjoy watching dogs fight. Someone else may find that repulsive but see nothing wrong with eating an animal who has had a life as full of pain and suffering as the lives of the fighting dogs. It's strange that we regard the latter as morally different from, and superior to, the former.

Because animals are property, we consider as 'humane treatment' that we would regard as torture if it were inflicted on humans.

We do not think clearly about our moral obligations to animals.

We do not need to eat animals, wear animals, or use animals for entertainment purposes, and our only defense of these uses is our pleasure, amusement, and convenience.

The proposition that humans have mental characteristics wholly absent in non-humans is inconsistent with the theory of evolution.

There is increasing social concern about our use of nonhumans for experiments, food, clothing and entertainment. This concern about animals reflects both our own moral development as a civilization and our recognition that the differences between humans and animals are, for the most part, differences of degree and not of kind.

There is no 'need' for us to eat meat, dairy or eggs. Indeed, these foods are increasingly linked to various human diseases and animal agriculture is an environmental disaster for the planet.

There is no moral distinction between fur and other materials made from animals, such as leather, which also is the result of the suffering and death of sentient beings.

We eat animals because they taste good. And if that's O.K., what's wrong with wearing fur? We need as a society to think seriously about our institutionalized animal use.