Quotes · Skopia

460 quotes

1772

★ 9.6

Philosophical literature

I think, therefore I am.

Rene Descartes

Discourse on Method · 1637

★ 9.1

Essay · Philosophical literature

I am condemned to be free.

Jean-Paul Sartre

Being and Nothingness · 1943

★ 8.5

An invasion of armies can be resisted; an invasion of ideas cannot be resisted.

Victor Hugo

1878

★ 8.4

Novel · Satire

All is for the best in the best of all possible worlds.

Voltaire

Candide · 1759

★ 7.6

Novel · Satire

If this is the best of possible worlds, what then are the others?

Voltaire

Candide · 1759

★ 7.4

Never interrupt your enemy when he's making a mistake.

Napoleon Bonaparte

1805

★ 7.3

Epigram · Philosophical literature

The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of.

Blaise Pascal

Pensees · 1662

★ 7.3

Letter

If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.

Voltaire

1768

★ 7.1

Play

Hell is other people.

Jean-Paul Sartre

1944

★ 7.1

Epigram · Philosophical literature

We never do evil so fully and cheerfully as when we do it out of conscience.

Blaise Pascal

Pensees · 1662

★ 7.1

Epigram · Philosophical literature

God 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

Pensees · 1662

★ 7.0

Novel · Satire

I have wanted to kill myself a hundred times, but somehow I am still in love with life. This ridiculous weakness is perhaps one of our more stupid melancholy propensities, for is there anything more stupid than to be eager to go on carrying a burden which one would gladly throw away, to loathe one’s very being and yet to hold it fast, to fondle the snake that devours us until it has eaten our hearts away?

Voltaire

Candide · 1759

★ 7.0

Personal journal

Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage.

Anais Nin

1941

★ 7.0

How can you govern a country which has 246 varieties of cheese?

Charles de Gaulle

1962

★ 7.0

Epigram · Philosophical literature

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

Pensees · 1670

★ 7.0

Letter

See many skies and seas.

Gustave Flaubert

1857

★ 7.0

Music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent.

Victor Hugo

1864

★ 7.0

Novel · Modernist literature

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

In Search of Lost Time · 1922

★ 7.0

We are like dwarfs on the shoulders of giants, so that we can see more than they, and things at a greater distance, not by virtue of any sharpness of sight on our part, or any physical distinction, but because we are carried high and raised up by their giant size.

Bernard of Chartres

1159

★ 6.9

Poem

Happy is he who, like Ulysses, has made a glorious voyage.

Joachim du Bellay

Les Regrets · 1558

★ 6.9

Play · Tragicomedy

To conquer without risk is to triumph without glory.

Pierre Corneille

Le Cid · 1636

★ 6.9

Autobiography and memoir

There are no small steps in great affairs.

Jean-Francois Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz

1717

★ 6.9

To govern is to choose.

Pierre-Marc-Gaston de Levis

1808

★ 6.9

Letter

Time is a great teacher but unfortunately it kills all its pupils.

Hector Berlioz

1856

★ 6.9

Personal journal

On Earth there is no heaven, but there are pieces of it.

Jules Renard

1896

★ 6.9

Letter

The very touch of the letter was as if you had taken me all into your arms.

Anais Nin

1932

★ 6.9

Essay

Seeing is forgetting the name of the things one sees.

Paul Valery

1936

★ 6.9

It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eyes.

Antoine de Saint-Exupery

The Little Prince · 1943

★ 6.9

Autobiography and memoir

There is nothing in the world which does not have its decisive moment, and the masterpiece of good management is to recognize and grasp this moment.

Jean-Francois Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz

1717

★ 6.9

Food writing

Alcohol is the prince of liquids, and carries the palate to its highest pitch of exaltation.

Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

The Physiology of Taste · 1825

★ 6.9

Magazine

The more things change, the more they are the same.

Alphonse Karr

1849

★ 6.9

Autobiography and memoir

Experience shows us that love does not consist in gazing at each other but in looking together in the same direction.

Antoine de Saint-Exupery

1939

★ 6.9

Poem

Hope raises no dust.

Paul Eluard

1946

★ 6.9

Political literature

Religious insanity is very common in the United States.

Alexis de Tocqueville

Democracy in America · 1840

★ 6.4

Philosophical literature

I will devote myself sincerely and without reservation to the general demolition of my opinions.

Rene Descartes

Meditations on First Philosophy · 1641

★ 6.3

Novel

No human creature can give orders to love.

George Sand

Jacques · 1834

★ 6.2

Political literature

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

Democracy in America · 1840

★ 6.2

Political literature

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

Democracy in America · 1840

★ 6.2

Poster

France has lost a battle. But France has not lost the war.

Charles de Gaulle

1940

★ 6.2

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