Jean Giraudoux
There's a kind of permission for war which can be given only by the world's mood and atmosphere, the feel of its pulse. It would be madness to undertake a war without that permission.Collection: War
Human beings are like timid punctuation marks sprinkled among the incomprehensible sentences of life.Collection: Punctuation Marks
Death is the next step after the pension-it's perpetual retirement without pay.Collection: Death
A faithful woman looks to the spring, a good book, perfume, earthquakes, and divine revelation for the experience others find in a lover. They deceive their husbands, so to speak, with the entire world, men excepted.Collection: Husband
The innocent one is he who does not explain, for whom life is both a mystery and a total light, one who does not complain... For innocence admits of neither regret nor dispute. The innocent one assumes all responsibility.Collection: Regret
Death holds no horrors. It is simply the ultimate horror of life.Collection: Death
Water is the one substance from which the earth can conceal nothing; it sucks out its innermost secrets and brings them to our very lips.Collection: Rain
Half the human race can change its name and sometimes its nation without suffering — at least half! All women!Collection: Race
Is a park any better than a coal mine? What's a mountain got that a slag pile hasn't? What would you rather have in your garden--an almond tree or an oil well?Collection: Garden
There are truths which can kill a nation.Collection: Truth
A woman is a creature who has discovered her own nature.Collection: Creatures
To have money is to be virtuous, honest, beautiful and witty And to be without is to be ugly and boring and stupid and useless.Collection: Beautiful
A wife loves out of duty, and duty leads to constraint, and constraint kills desire.Collection: Marriage
The spirit of a nation is what counts-the look in its eyes.Collection: Eye
Young girls are the chatelaines of truth; they must see that it is protected, that the guilty lead the life of the guilty, even if the world rocks on its foundations.Collection: Girl
The brave men die in war. It takes great luck or judgment not to be killed. Once‚ at least‚ the head has to bow and the knee has to bend to danger. The soldiers who march back under the triumphal arches are death's deserters.Collection: War
Everyone always dies for his country. If you have lived in it, well and wisely and actively, you die for it too.Collection: Country
I believe in the gods; or rather I believe that I believe in the gods. But I don't believe that they are great brooding presences watching over us; I believe they are completely absent minded.Collection: Believe
During war we imprison the rights of man.Collection: War
When he (man) ceased any longer to heed the words of the seers and prophets, science lovingly brought forth the radio.Collection: Men
A golf course is the epitome of all that is purely transitory in the universe, a space not to dwell in, but to get over as quickly as possible.Collection: Golf
I remember a time when a cabbage could sell itself by being a cabbage. Nowadays it’s no good being a cabbage – unless you have an agent and pay him a commission. Nothing is free anymore to sell itself or give itself away. These days, Countess, every cabbage has its pimp.Collection: Giving
Each day the worst of our faults, our deficiencies, our crimes, the truth of our lives, is stifled under a triple layer of forgetfulness, death and the ordinary course of justice.Collection: Justice
You're an Attorney. It's your duty to lie, conceal, and distort everything, and slander everybody.Collection: Lying
Falsehood is the jockey of misfortune.Collection: Lying
Their own kind of logic which cries for miracles and, on occasion.Collection: Miracle
Who would prefer peace to the glory of hunger and thirst, of wading through mud, and dying in the service of one's country?Collection: Country
In war-time a man is called a hero. It doesn't make him any braver, and he runs for his life. But at least it's a hero who is running away.Collection: Running
Countries are like fruit-the worms are always inside.Collection: Country
All the evil in the world is the fault of the self-styled pure in heart, a result of their eagerness to unearth secrets and expose them to the light of the sun.Collection: Heart
Women have no sense of the abstract-a woman admiring the sky is a woman caressing the sky. In a woman's mind beauty is something she needs to touch.Collection: Women
The stage play is a trial, not a deed of violence. The soul is opened, like the combination of a safe, by means of a word. You don't require an acetylene torch.Collection: Mean
Born enemies don't fight. Nations you would say were designed to go to war against each other by their skins, their language, their smell; always jealous of each other, always hating each other; they're not the ones who fight. You will find the real antagonists in nations fate has groomed and made ready for the same war.Collection: Real