Top 10 Most Famous Anatole France Quotes
To accomplish great things, we must not only act, but also dream; not only plan, but also believe.
— Anatole France
If the path be beautiful, let us not ask where it leads.
— Anatole France
Until one has loved an animal a part of one’s soul remains unawakened.
— Anatole France
Lovers who love truly do not write down their happiness.
— Anatole France
The whole art of teaching is only the art of awakening the natural curiosity of young minds for the purpose of satisfying it afterwards.
— Anatole France
Nine tenths of education is encouragement.
— Anatole France
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.
— Anatole France
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.
— Anatole France
There are very honest people who do not think that they have had a bargain unless they have cheated a merchant.
— Anatole France
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.
— Anatole France
Anatole France Quotes about Love
In art as in love, instinct is enough.
— Anatole France
All the good writers of confessions, from Augustine onwards, are men who are still a little in love with their sins. One thing above all gives charm to men’s thoughts, and this is unrest. A mind that is not uneasy irritates me and bores me.
— Anatole France
Yet, every now and then, there would pass a young girl, slender, fair, and desirable, arousing in young men a not ignoble desire to possess her, and stirring in old men regrets for ecstasy not seized and now forever past.
— Anatole France
We love truly only those we love even in their weakness and their poverty. To forbear, to forgive, to console, that alone is the science of love.
— Anatole France
Christianity has done love a great service by making it a sin.
— Anatole France
Lovers who love well do not write down their happiness.
— Anatole France
The men who took care of the happiness of the people made their loved ones very unhappy.
— Anatole France
If the path be beautiful, let us not question where it leads.
— Anatole France
Lovers who love truly do not write down their happiness.
— Anatole France
A tale without love is like beef without mustard: insipid.
— Anatole France
Anatole France Quotes on Education
Nine-tenths of education is encouragement.
— Anatole France
You become a good writer just as you become a good joiner: by planing down your sentences.
— Anatole France
All the historical books which contain no lies are extremely tedious.
— Anatole France
The art of teaching is only the art of arousing the curiosity of young souls and then satisfying it.
— Anatole France
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.
— Anatole France
An education which does not cultivate the will is an education that depraves the mind.
— Anatole France
Nine tenths of education is encouragement.
— Anatole France
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.
— Anatole France
True education is the ability to discern the difference between what you do know and what you don’t.
— Anatole France
Insightful Anatole France Quotes
To imagine is everything, to know is nothing at all.
— Anatole France
If a million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing.
— Anatole France
It is better to understand little than to misunderstand a lot.
— Anatole France
It is by acts and not by ideas that people live.
— Anatole France
It is human nature to think wisely and act in an absurd fashion.
— Anatole France
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.
— Anatole France
It is well for the heart to be naive and the mind not to be.
— Anatole France
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.
— Anatole France
Chance is perhaps the pseudonym of God when he did not want to sign.
— Anatole France
The truth is that life is delicious, horrible, charming, frightful, sweet, bitter, and that is everything.
— Anatole France
Nature has no principles. She makes no distinction between good and evil.
— Anatole France
Wandering re-establishes the original harmony which once existed between man and the universe.
— Anatole France
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.
— Anatole France
The greatest virtue of man is perhaps curiosity.
— Anatole France
A person is never happy except at the price of some ignorance.
— Anatole France
The good critic is he who relates the adventures of his soul among masterpieces.
— Anatole France
The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself a fool.
— Anatole France
Irony is the gaiety of reflection and the joy of wisdom.
— Anatole France
Of all the sexual aberrations, chastity is the strangest.
— Anatole France
I prefer the folly of enthusiasm to the indifference of wisdom.
— Anatole France
The average man does not know what to do with this life, yet wants another one which will last forever.
— Anatole France
Religion has done love a great service by making it a sin.
— Anatole France
I thank fate for having made me born poor. Poverty taught me the true value of the gifts useful to life.
— Anatole France
That man is prudent who neither hopes nor fears anything from the uncertain events of the future.
— Anatole France
Only men who are not interested in women are interested in women’s clothes. Men who like women never notice what they wear.
— Anatole France
Existence would be intolerable if we were never to dream.
— Anatole France
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!
— Anatole France
It is only the poor who pay cash, and that not from virtue, but because they are refused credit.
— Anatole France
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.
— Anatole France
We do not know what to do with this short life, yet we want another which will be eternal.
— Anatole France
Innocence most often is a good fortune and not a virtue.
— Anatole France
Silence is the wit of fools.
— Anatole France
When a thing has been said and well, have no scruple. Take it and copy it.
— Anatole France
History books that contain no lies are extremely dull.
— Anatole France
The books that everybody admires are those that nobody reads.
— Anatole France
Ignorance and error are necessary to life, like bread and water.
— Anatole France
We reproach people for talking about themselves; but it is the subject they treat best.
— Anatole France
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.
— Anatole France
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.
— Anatole France
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.
— Anatole France
Of all the ways of defining man, the worst is the one which makes him out to be a rational animal.
— Anatole France
Without lies humanity would perish of despair and boredom.
— Anatole France
One thing above all gives charm to men’s thoughts, and this is unrest. A mind that is not uneasy irritates and bores me.
— Anatole France
What frightens us most in a madman is his sane conversation.
— Anatole France
Stupidity is far more dangerous than evil, for evil takes a break from time to time, stupidity does not.
— Anatole France
Man is a rational animal. He can think up a reason for anything he wants to believe.
— Anatole France
In its majestic equality, the law forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets and steal loaves of bread.
— Anatole France
If fifty million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing.
— Anatole France
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.
— Anatole France
The more you say, the less they remember.
— Anatole France
We have never heard the devil’s side of the story, God wrote all the book.
— Anatole France
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.
— Anatole France
Awaken people’s curiosity. It is enough to open minds, do not overload them. Put there just a spark.
— Anatole France
Of all earthly creatures, humans alone have the power to choose. One must never lose time in vainly regretting the past nor in complaining about the changes which cause us discomfort, for change is the very essence of life.
— Anatole France
It is human nature to think wisely and to act in an absurd fashion.
— Anatole France
Sometimes one day in a difference place gives you more than ten years of a life at home.
— Anatole France
Intelligent women always marry fools.
— Anatole France
I cling to my imperfection, as the very essence of my being.
— Anatole France
A woman without breasts is like a bed without pillows.
— Anatole France
The first virtue of all really great men is that they are sincere. They eradicate hypocrisy from their hearts.
— Anatole France
It is well for the heart to be naive and for the mind not to be.
— Anatole France quotes
To die for an idea is to set a rather high price upon conjecture.
— Anatole France
Lack of understanding is a great power. Sometimes it enables men to conquer the world.
— Anatole France
The Future is hidden even from those who are forging it.
— Anatole France
It is the certainty that they possess the truth that makes men cruel.
— Anatole France
The future is a convenient place for dreams.
— Anatole France
Caress your phrase tenderly; it will end by smiling at you.
— Anatole France
It is good to collect things, but it is better to go on walks.
— Anatole France
The impotence of God is infinite.
— Anatole France
America, where thanks to Congress, there are forty million laws to enforce the Ten Commandments.
— Anatole France
Chance is the pseudonym God uses when He’d rather not sign His own name.
— Anatole France
Good angels are fallible … they sin every day and fall from Heaven like flies.
— Anatole France
It is by believing in roses that you make them bloom.
— Anatole France
Justice is the means by which established injustices are sanctioned.
— Anatole France
The best sentence? The shortest.
— Anatole France
Our passions are ourselves.
— Anatole France
For a man’s life would become intolerable, if he knew what was going to happen to him. He would be made aware of future evils, and would suffer their agonies in advance, while he would get no joy of present blessings since he would know how they would end. Ignorance is the necessary condition of human happiness, and it has to be admitted that on the whole mankind observes that condition well. We are almost entirely ignorant of ourselves; absolutely of others. In ignorance, we find our bliss; in illusions, our happiness.
— Anatole France
Nature, in her indifference, makes no distinction between good and evil.
— Anatole France
Without the Utopians of other times, men would still live in caves, miserable and naked. It was Utopians who traced the lines of the first City…..Out of generous dreams come beneficial realities. Utopia is the principle of all progress, and the essay into a better future.
— Anatole France
What men call civilization is the condition of present customs; what they call barbarism, the condition of past ones.
— Anatole France
It is only the poor who are forbidden to beg.
— Anatole France
The faculty of doubting is rare among men. A few choice spirits carry the germs of it in them, but these do not develop without training.
— Anatole France
He flattered himself on being a man without any prejudices, and this pretension itself is a very great prejudice.
— Anatole France
