Anatole France
Anatole France
Anatole Francewas a French poet, journalist, and novelist. He was born in Paris, and died in Saint-Cyr-sur-Loire. He was a successful novelist, with several best-sellers. Ironic and skeptical, he was considered in his day the ideal French man of letters. He was a member of the Académie française, and won the 1921 Nobel Prize in Literature "in recognition of his brilliant literary achievements, characterized as they are by a nobility of style, a profound human sympathy, grace, and a true...
NationalityFrench
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth16 April 1844
CountryFrance
The law ... allows rich as well as poor to sleep under bridges.
We thank God for having created this world, and praise Him for having made another, quite different one, where the wrongs of this one are corrected.
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.
Our passions are ourselves.
It is only the poor who are forbidden to beg.
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.
We chase dreams and embrace shadows.
The first virtue of all really great men is that they are sincere. They eradicate hypocrisy from their hearts.
Human affairs inspire in noble hearts only two feelings-admiration or pity.
Chance is the pseudonym God uses when He'd rather not sign His own name.
We have drugs to make women speak, but none to keep them silent.
God forbids suicide, and is unwilling that his creatures should destroy themselves.
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.
A good critic is the man who describes his adventures among masterpieces.