Anatole France
I thank fate for having made me born poor. Poverty taught me the true value of the gifts useful to life.
The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself a fool.
Existence would be intolerable if we were never to dream.
Of all the ways of defining man, the worst is the one which makes him out to be a rational animal.
We reproach people for talking about themselves; but it is the subject they treat best.
Stupidity is far more dangerous than evil, for evil takes a break from time to time, stupidity does not.Collection: Evil
In its majestic equality, the law forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets and steal loaves of bread.Collection: Peace
If fifty million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing.Collection: Funny
You think you are dying for your country; you die for the industrialists.Collection: Country
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.Collection: Teaching
Man is a rational animal. He can think up a reason for anything he wants to believe.Collection: Believe
A people living under the perpetual menace of war and invasion is very easy to govern. It demands no social reform. It does not haggle over expenditures for armaments and military equipment. It pays without discussion, it ruins itself, and that is an excellent thing for the syndicates of financiers and manufacturers for whom patriotic terrors are an abundant source of gain.Collection: Military
The more you say, the less they remember.Collection: Remember
The future is a convenient place for dreams.Collection: Dream
We have never heard the devil's side of the story, God wrote all the book.Collection: Book
The best sentence? The shortest.Collection: Sentences
It is the certainty that they possess the truth that makes men cruel.Collection: Wisdom
Dictionary: The universe in alphabetical order.Collection: Order
Change is the essence of life.Collection: Essence
America, where thanks to Congress, there are forty million laws to enforce the Ten Commandments.Collection: Law
God forbids suicide, and is unwilling that his creatures should destroy themselves.Collection: Suicide
The man of science multiples the points of contact between man and nature.Collection: Nature
Play is hand-to-hand encounter with Fate.Collection: Fate
The law in its majesty prohibits rich and poor alike from sleeping under bridges.Collection: Sleep
Those who have given themselves the most concern about the happiness of peoples have made their neighbors very miserable.Collection: Happiness
There is only one science, love, one riches, love, only one policy, love. To make love is all the law and the prophets.Collection: Love Is
In truth man is made rather to eat ices than to pore over old texts.Collection: Men
Man is so made that he can only find relaxation from one kind of labor by taking up another.Collection: Work
The heart errs like the head; its errors are not any the less fatal, and we have more trouble getting free of them because of their sweetness.Collection: Heart
A person is never happy except at the price of some ignorance. [The ability to focus on positives and distract your mind from negatives for at least a time is a necessary skill for being happy.]Collection: Gratitude
Never lend books, for no one ever returns themCollection: Book
Dog! When we first met on the highway of life, we came from the two poles of creation.... What can be the meaning of the obscure love for me that has sprung up in your heart?Collection: Friendship
There are no bad books any more than there are ugly women.Collection: Book
Distrust even Mathematics; albeit so sublime and highly perfected, we have here a machine of such delicacy it can only work in vacuo, and one grain of sand in the wheels is enough to put everything out of gear. One shudders to think to what disaster such a grain of sand may bring a Mathematical brain. Remember Pascal.Collection: Science
It is not easy to be a pretty woman without causing mischief.Collection: Sex
Christianity has done a great deal for love by making a sin of it.Collection: Love
Ugly women may be naturally quite as capricious as pretty ones; but as they are never petted and spoiled, and as no allowances are made for them, they soon find themselves obliged either to suppress their whims or to hide them.Collection: Women
A dictionary is merely the universe arranged in alphabetical order.Collection: Order
What we call strategy is mainly just crossing rivers on bridges and passing mountains though cols.Collection: Climbing
Jealousy is a virtue of democracies which preserves them from tyrants.Collection: Tyrants
The mania of thinking renders one unfit for every activity.Collection: Thinking
There is a certain impertinence in allowing oneself to be burned for an opinion.Collection: Moral
Universal peace will be realized, not because man will become better, but because a new order of things, a new science, new economic necessities, will impose peace.Collection: Peace
Irony and pity are two good counselors: one, in smiling, makes life pleasurable; the other, who cries, makes it sacred.Collection: Life
I do not know any reading more easy, more fascinating, more delightful than a catalogue.Collection: Book
It's not by amusing oneself that one learns.Collection: Learning
The law ... allows rich as well as poor to sleep under bridges.Collection: Sleep
Justice is the sanction of established injustice.Collection: Justice
I ought not to fear to survive my own people so long as there are men in the world; for there are always some whom one can love.Collection: Men