Explore Quotes by Anatole France

It is good to collect things, but it is better to go on walks.

God, conquered, will become Satan; Satan, conquering, will become God. May the fates spare me this terrible lot; I love the Hell which formed my genius. I love the Earth where I have done some good, if it be possible to do any good in this fearful world where beings live but by rapine.

The future is a convenient place for dreams.

It is in the ability to deceive oneself that the greatest talent is shown.

People who don't count won't count.

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.

Irony and pity are two good counselors: one, in smiling, makes life pleasurable; the other, who cries, makes it sacred.

Justice is the sanction of established injustice.

To die for an idea is to set a rather high price upon conjecture.

A dictionary is merely the universe arranged in alphabetical order.

Unhappiness does make people look stupid.

Custom alone regulates morals.

Christianity has done a great deal for love by making a sin of it.

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.

The duty of literature is to note what counts, and to light up what is suited to the light. If it ceases to choose and to love, it becomes like a woman who gives herself without preference.

A simple style is like white light. Although complex, it does not appear to be so.

You become a good writer just as you become a good joiner: by planing down your sentences.

The finest words in the world are only vain sounds if you can't understand them. The best sentence? The shortest.

Never lend books, for no one ever returns them

Good angels are fallible ... they sin every day and fall from Heaven like flies.

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.