Anatole France quotes

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

— 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

“Nine tenths of education is encouragement.”

— 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

“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

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

— Anatole France

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

— Anatole France

“The greatest virtue of man is perhaps curiosity.”

— 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

“What frightens us most in a madman is his sane conversation.”

— Anatole France

“Innocence most often is a good fortune and not a virtue.”

— Anatole France

“Irony is the gaiety of reflection and the joy of wisdom.”

— Anatole France

“Wandering re-establishes the original harmony which once existed between man and the universe.”

— 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

“Silence is the wit of fools.”

— Anatole France

“Lovers who love truly do not write down their happiness.”

— Anatole France

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

— Anatole France

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

— Anatole France

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

— Anatole France

“That man is prudent who neither hopes nor fears anything from the uncertain events of the future.”

— Anatole France

“Existence would be intolerable if we were never to dream.”

— Anatole France

“The good critic is he who relates the adventures of his soul among masterpieces.”

— 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

“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

“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

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

— Anatole France

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

— Anatole France

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

— Anatole France

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

— Anatole France

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

— Anatole France