Quotes · Skopia

202 quotes

SortEditorial Year Length

Place·Paris✕clear

Philosophy triumphs easily over past evils and future evils; but present evils triumph over it.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld

1678

★ 1.0

There is no disguise which can hide love for long where it exists, or feign it where it does not.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld

1678

★ 1.0

Scientific literature

We must trust to nothing but facts: these are presented to us by nature and cannot deceive.

Antoine Lavoisier

1789

★ 1.0

A hint-don't paint too much direct from nature. Art is an abstraction! Study nature then brood on it and treasure the creation which will result, which is the only way to ascend towards God-to create like our Divine Master.

1888

★ 1.0

I obey Nature, and never do I dare give orders to it. My only ambition is servile fidelity to it.

1910

★ 1.0

The whole effect of Christianity was to transfer the drama onto the moral plane.

The Counterfeiters · 1925

★ 1.0

To me, photography is the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event as well as of a precise organization of forms which give that event its proper expression.

Henri Cartier-Bresson

1952

★ 1.0

Novel · Historical literature

One reproaches a lover, but can one reproach a husband, when his only fault is that he no longer loves?

Madame de La Fayette

1678

★ 1.1

Novel · Modernist literature

In his younger days a man dreams of possessing the heart of the woman whom he loves; later, the feeling that he possesses the heart of a woman may be enough to make him fall in love with her.

In Search of Lost Time · 1913

★ 1.1

The season has shed its mantle of wind and chill and rain.

Charles d'Orleans

1440

★ 1.2

I would rather die of passion than of boredom.

The Ladies' Paradise · 1883

★ 1.2

Novel · Modernist literature

Every reader, as he reads, is actually the reader of himself. The writer's work is only a kind of optical instrument he provides the reader so he can discern what he might never have seen in himself without this book. The reader's recognition in himself of what the book says is the proof of the book's truth.

In Search of Lost Time · 1922

★ 1.2

Political literature

Liberty cannot be established without morality, nor morality without faith.

Alexis de Tocqueville

Democracy in America · 1835

★ 1.3

Political literature · Philosophical literature

Society cares for the individual only so far as he is profitable.

Simone de Beauvoir

1970

★ 1.3

We must have religion for religion's sake, morality for morality's sake, as with art for art's sake... The beautiful cannot be the way to what is useful, or to what is good, or to what is holy; it leads only to itself.

1818

★ 1.8

The important thing in life is not the victory but the contest; the essential thing is not to have won but to have fought well.

Baron Pierre de Coubertin

1908

★ 1.8

Ah, this, that we call happiness, how intimate a part of the soul it is, and of what little importance are the outside elements which seem to go to its making!

1909

★ 1.8

Essay · Philosophical literature

Civilized people must get off their high horse and learn with humble lucidity that they too are an indigenous variety.

Alain Finkielkraut

1988

★ 1.8

Between good sense and good taste there is the same difference as between cause and effect.

Jean de La Bruyere

1688

★ 1.9

Philosophical literature

If ignorance of nature gave birth to the Gods, knowledge of nature is destined to destroy them.

Baron d'Holbach

1770

★ 1.9

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