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Art8 quotes
Thanks to art, instead of seeing one world only, our own, we see that world multiply itself and we have at our disposal as many worlds as there are original artists, worlds more different one from the other than those which revolve in infinite space, worlds which, centuries after the extinction of the fire from which their light first emanated, whether it is called Rembrandt or Vermeer, send us still each one its special radiance. — Marcel Proust · 1922In art, there are only two types of people: revolutionaries and plagiarists. — Paul Gauguin · 1895Museums have today become the new churches. — Christian Boltanski · 1997Art is a way of recognizing oneself, which is why it will always be modern. — Louise BourgeoisThe artist must have the patience of water that eats away the rock drop by drop. — Auguste RodinWe 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. — Victor Cousin · 1818All 8 quotes →Freedom7 quotes
I am condemned to be free. — Jean-Paul Sartre · 1943Nothing is more fertile in prodigies than the art of being free; but there is nothing more arduous than the apprenticeship of liberty. — Alexis de Tocqueville · 1835Providence has not created mankind entirely independent or entirely free. It is true that around every man a fatal circle is traced, beyond which he cannot pass; but within the wide verge of that circle he is powerful and free. — Alexis de Tocqueville · 1840Despots themselves do not deny that freedom is excellent; only they desire it for themselves alone, and they maintain that everyone else is altogether unworthy of it. — Alexis de Tocqueville · 1856Man, being condemned to be free carries the weight of the whole world on his shoulders; he is responsible for the world and himself as a way of being. — Jean-Paul Sartre · 1943Freedom alone substitutes from time to time for the love of material comfort more powerful and more lofty passions; it alone supplies ambition with greater objectives than the acquisition of riches, and creates the light that makes it possible to see and to judge the vices and virtues of mankind. — Alexis de Tocqueville · 1856All 7 quotes →Love6 quotes
Where true love is, it showeth; it will not feign. — Christine de Pizan · 1399We love well only once, the first time. The loves which follow are less involuntary. — Jean de La Bruyere · 1688Love... Is a striking example of how little reality means to us. — Marcel Proust · 1922With love, you see, even too much is not enough. — Pierre Beaumarchais · 1784Time, which strengthens friendship, weakens love. — Jean de La Bruyere · 1688There is no disguise which can hide love for long where it exists, or feign it where it does not. — Francois de La Rochefoucauld · 1678The human condition6 quotes
The bonds between ourselves and another person exist only in our minds. Memory as it grows fainter loosens them, and notwithstanding the illusion by which we want to be duped and which, out of love, friendship, politeness, deference, duty, we dupe other people, we exist alone. Man is the creature who cannot escape from himself, who knows other people only in himself, and when he asserts the contrary, he is lying. — Marcel Proust · 1922The great mystery is not that we should have been thrown down here at random between the profusion of matter and that of the stars; it is that from our very prison we should draw, from our own selves, images powerful enough to deny our nothingness. — Andre Malraux · 1943Providence has not created mankind entirely independent or entirely free. It is true that around every man a fatal circle is traced, beyond which he cannot pass; but within the wide verge of that circle he is powerful and free. — Alexis de Tocqueville · 1840All human misfortune comes from this one thing: man's being unable to sit still in a room. — Blaise Pascal · 1662Do you believe that men have always massacred each other as they do to-day, that they have always been liars, cheats, traitors, ingrates, brigands, idiots, thieves, scoundrels, gluttons, drunkards, misers, envious, ambitious, bloody-minded, calumniators, debauchees, fanatics, hypocrites, and fools? — Voltaire · 1759The state of man: inconstancy, boredom, anxiety. — Blaise Pascal · 1662America5 quotes
Religious insanity is very common in the United States. — Alexis de Tocqueville · 1840The love of wealth is therefore to be traced, as either a principal or accessory motive, at the bottom of all that the Americans do; this gives to all their passions a sort of family likeness. — Alexis de Tocqueville · 1840I know of no country, indeed, where the love of money has taken a stronger hold on the affections of men, and where a profounder contempt is expressed for the theory of the permanent equality of property. — Alexis de Tocqueville · 1835America is a land of wonders, in which everything is in constant motion and every change seems an improvement. The idea of novelty is there indissolubly connected with the idea of amelioration. — Alexis de Tocqueville · 1835There are, at the present time, two great nations in the world, which seem to tend towards the same end, although they started from different points; I allude to the Russians and the Americans... Their starting point is different, and their courses are not the same; yet each of them seems to be marked out by the will of Heaven to sway the destinies of half the globe. — Alexis de Tocqueville · 1840Democracy5 quotes
Thus not only does democracy make every man forget his ancestors, but it hides his descendants and separates his contemporaries from him; it throws him back forever upon himself alone and threatens in the end to confine him entirely within the solitude of his own heart. — Alexis de Tocqueville · 1840Democratic nations care but little for what has been, but they are haunted by visions of what will be; in this direction their unbounded imagination grows and dilates beyond all measure.... Democracy, which shuts the past against the poet, opens the future before him. — Alexis de Tocqueville · 1840When the masses get involved in reasoning, everything is lost. — Voltaire · 1766In every well-governed state, wealth is a sacred thing; in democracies it is the only sacred thing. — Anatole France · 1908Democracies cannot dispense with hypocrisy any more than dictatorships can with cynicism. — Georges Bernanos · 1939Reason5 quotes
The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of. — Blaise Pascal · 1662The last proceeding of reason is to recognize that there is an infinity of things which are beyond it. — Blaise Pascal · 1662All that is beautiful and noble is the result of reason and calculation. — Charles Baudelaire · 1863It is the heart which perceives God and not the reason. — Blaise Pascal · 1662When prejudice commands, reason is silent. — Claude Adrien Helvetius · 1771Delusion4 quotes
One is easily fooled by that which one loves. — Moliere · 1669We confess to little faults only to persuade ourselves that we have no great ones. — Francois de La Rochefoucauld · 1678Love... Is a striking example of how little reality means to us. — Marcel Proust · 1922Rob him of his illusions, and man would perish of very weariness and despair. — Anatole France · 1922Existence of God4 quotes
If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him. — Voltaire · 1768God is, or He is not. But to which side shall we incline? Reason can decide nothing here. There is an infinite chaos which separates us. A game is being played at the extremity of this infinite distance where heads or tails will turn up. What will you wager?... If you win, you win everything; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation that He is. — Blaise Pascal · 1662I have too much respect for the idea of God to make it responsible for such an absurd world. — Georges Duhamel · 1937If ignorance of nature gave birth to the Gods, knowledge of nature is destined to destroy them. — Baron d'Holbach · 1770God4 quotes
If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him. — Voltaire · 1768God is, or He is not. But to which side shall we incline? Reason can decide nothing here. There is an infinite chaos which separates us. A game is being played at the extremity of this infinite distance where heads or tails will turn up. What will you wager?... If you win, you win everything; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation that He is. — Blaise Pascal · 1662I have too much respect for the idea of God to make it responsible for such an absurd world. — Georges Duhamel · 1937It is the heart which perceives God and not the reason. — Blaise Pascal · 1662Human nature4 quotes
Do you believe that men have always massacred each other as they do to-day, that they have always been liars, cheats, traitors, ingrates, brigands, idiots, thieves, scoundrels, gluttons, drunkards, misers, envious, ambitious, bloody-minded, calumniators, debauchees, fanatics, hypocrites, and fools? — Voltaire · 1759Man is so made that he can only find relaxation from one kind of labor by taking up another. — Anatole France · 1881Our nature lies in movement; complete calm is death. — Blaise Pascal · 1662Rob him of his illusions, and man would perish of very weariness and despair. — Anatole France · 1922Patriarchy4 quotes
This has always been a man's world, and none of the reasons hitherto brought forward in explanation of this fact has seemed adequate. — Simone de Beauvoir · 1949It is one of the superstitions of the human mind to have imagined that virginity could be a virtue. — Voltaire · 1750I could hardly find a book on morals where, even before I had read it in its entirety, I did not find several chapters or certain sections attacking women, no matter who the author was... I finally decided that God formed a vile creature when He made woman, and I wondered how such a worthy artisan could have deigned to make such an abominable work which, from what they say, is the vessel as well as the refuge and abode of ever evil and vice. — Christine de Pizan · 1405The debility to which Nature condemned woman incontestably proves that her design is for man, who then more than ever enjoys his strength, to exercise it in all the violent forms that suit him best, by means of tortures, if he be so inclined, or worse. — Marquis de Sade · 1795War4 quotes
God is on the side not of the heavy battalions, but of the best shots. — Voltaire · 1750When the rich wage war it's the poor who die. — Jean-Paul Sartre · 1951Even in those cities which seem to enjoy the blessings of peace, and where the arts flourish, the inhabitants are devoured by envy, cares and anxieties, which are greater plagues than any experienced in a town when it is under siege. — Voltaire · 1759You think you are dying for your country; you die for the industrialists. — Anatole France · 1922American character3 quotes
The love of wealth is therefore to be traced, as either a principal or accessory motive, at the bottom of all that the Americans do; this gives to all their passions a sort of family likeness. — Alexis de Tocqueville · 1840They have all a lively faith in the perfectibility of man, they judge that the diffusion of knowledge must necessarily be advantageous, and the consequences of ignorance fatal; they all consider society as a body in a state of improvement, humanity as a changing scene, in which nothing is, or ought to be, permanent; and they admit that what appears to them today to be good, may be superseded by something better tomorrow. — Alexis de Tocqueville · 1835I have never been more struck by the good sense and the practical judgment of the Americans than in the manner in which they elude the numberless difficulties resulting from their Federal Constitution. — Alexis de Tocqueville · 1835Emotions3 quotes
The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of. — Blaise Pascal · 1662We are never so happy nor so unhappy as we imagine. — Francois de La Rochefoucauld · 1678In the realm of the emotions, the real is indistinguishable from the imaginary. — Andre Gide · 1925Empathy3 quotes
The only true voyage of discovery, the only fountain of Eternal Youth, would be not to visit strange lands but to possess other eyes, to behold the universe through the eyes of another, of a hundred others, to behold the hundred universes that each of them beholds, that each of them is. — Marcel Proust · 1922To be totally understanding makes one very indulgent. — Madame de Stael · 1807True kindness presupposes the faculty of imagining as one's own the sufferings and joys of others. — Andre Gide · 1959Friendship3 quotes
If all men knew what each said of the other, there would not be four friends in the world. — Blaise Pascal · 1662Time, which strengthens friendship, weakens love. — Jean de La Bruyere · 1688The more we love our friends, the less we flatter them; it is by excusing nothing that pure love shows itself. — Moliere · 1666Men and women3 quotes
When we abolish the slavery of half of humanity, together with the whole system of hypocrisy that it implies, then the "division" of humanity will reveal its genuine significance and the human couple will find its true form. — Simone de Beauvoir · 1949It is not in giving life but in risking life that man is raised above the animal; that is why superiority has been accorded in humanity not to the sex that brings forth but to that which kills. — Simone de Beauvoir · 1949In 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. — Marcel Proust · 1913Nature of man3 quotes
What a chimera then is man! What a novelty! What a monster, what a chaos, what a contradiction, what a prodigy! Judge of all things, feeble earth-worn, depository of truth, a sink of uncertainty and error, the glory and the shame of the universe. — Blaise Pascal · 1670Man is only a reed, the weakest thing in nature; but he is a thinking reed. — Blaise Pascal · 1662Man is neither angel nor beast; and the misfortune is that he who would act the angel acts the beast. — Blaise Pascal · 1670Problem of evil3 quotes
All is for the best in the best of all possible worlds. — Voltaire · 1759If this is the best of possible worlds, what then are the others? — Voltaire · 1759I have too much respect for the idea of God to make it responsible for such an absurd world. — Georges Duhamel · 1937Reason and emotion3 quotes
The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of. — Blaise Pascal · 1662It is the heart which perceives God and not the reason. — Blaise Pascal · 1662Let us work without reasoning, it is the only way to make life endurable. — Voltaire · 1759Absence2 quotes
Absence diminishes mediocre passions and increases great ones, as the wind blows out candles and fans fires. — Francois de La Rochefoucauld · 1678Absence diminishes commonplace passions and increases great ones, as the wind extinguishes candles and kindles fire. — Francois de La Rochefoucauld · 1678Artistic process2 quotes
The artist must have the patience of water that eats away the rock drop by drop. — Auguste RodinI obey Nature, and never do I dare give orders to it. My only ambition is servile fidelity to it. — Auguste Rodin · 1910Being in love2 quotes
One is easily fooled by that which one loves. — Moliere · 1669We love well only once, the first time. The loves which follow are less involuntary. — Jean de La Bruyere · 1688Character flaws2 quotes
If we had no faults of our own, we would not take so much pleasure in noticing those of others. — Francois de La Rochefoucauld · 1678We confess to little faults only to persuade ourselves that we have no great ones. — Francois de La Rochefoucauld · 1678Civilization2 quotes
Theory of the true civilization.
It is not to be found in gas or steam or table turning, It consists in the diminution of the traces of original sin. — Charles Baudelaire · 1867Of all nations, those submit to civilization with the most difficulty which habitually live by the chase. — Alexis de Tocqueville · 1840Courage2 quotes
Refuse to be an accomplice. — Simone Weil · 1933One doesn't discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time. — Andre Gide · 1925Decline of religion2 quotes
Museums have today become the new churches. — Christian Boltanski · 1997God is dead! Heaven is empty-Weep, children,
You no longer have a father. — Gerard de Nerval · 1854Discovery2 quotes
The only true voyage of discovery, the only fountain of Eternal Youth, would be not to visit strange lands but to possess other eyes, to behold the universe through the eyes of another, of a hundred others, to behold the hundred universes that each of them beholds, that each of them is. — Marcel Proust · 1922One doesn't discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time. — Andre Gide · 1925Doubt and skepticism2 quotes
The skeptical are the most credulous. — Blaise Pascal · 1662Doubt is not a pleasant condition. But certainty is an absurd one. — Voltaire · 1770