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Michel de Montaigne32 quotes
I find that the best goodness I have has some tincture of vice. — Michel de Montaigne · 1580Truly man is a marvelously vain, diverse, and undulating object. It is hard to found any constant and uniform judgement on him. — Michel de Montaigne · 1580It happens as with the cages: the birds without despair to get in, and those within despair of getting out. — Michel de Montaigne · 1580For truth itself does not have the privilege to be employed at any time and in every way; its use, noble as it is, has its circumscriptions and limits. — Michel de Montaigne · 1580Let us give Nature a chance; she knows her business better than we do. — Michel de Montaigne · 1580The easy, gentle and sloping path…is not the path of true virtue. It demands a rough and thorny road. — Michel de Montaigne · 1580All 32 quotes →Voltaire30 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 · 1759If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him. — Voltaire · 1768I 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 · 1759I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: "Oh Lord, make my enemies ridiculous." And God granted it. — Voltaire · 1767In general, the art of government consists in taking as much money as possible from one class of citizens to give to the other. — Voltaire · 1764All 30 quotes →Blaise Pascal21 quotes
The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of. — Blaise Pascal · 1662We never do evil so fully and cheerfully as when we do it out of conscience. — Blaise Pascal · 1662God 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 · 1662What 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 · 1670The last act is bloody, no matter how happy the rest of the play. — Blaise Pascal · 1670We know the truth, not only by the reason, but by the heart. — Blaise Pascal · 1670All 21 quotes →Alexis de Tocqueville20 quotes
Religious insanity is very common in the United States. — Alexis de Tocqueville · 1840Thus 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 · 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 · 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 · 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 · 1835Nothing 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 · 1835All 20 quotes →Gustave Flaubert18 quotes
See many skies and seas. — Gustave Flaubert · 1857We shouldn't maltreat our idols: the gilt comes off on our hands. — Gustave Flaubert · 1857Casting aspersions on those we love always does something to loosen our ties. We shouldn't maltreat our idols; the gilt comes off in our hands. — Gustave Flaubert · 1856Human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we tap crude rhythms for bears to dance to, while we long to make music that will melt the stars. — Gustave Flaubert · 1856What is beautiful is moral, that is all there is to it. — Gustave Flaubert · 1880Emma was like all his other mistresses; and as the charm of novelty gradually slipped from her like a piece of her clothing, he saw revealed in all its nakedness the eternal monotony of passion, which always assumes the same forms and always speaks the same language. — Gustave Flaubert · 1856All 18 quotes →Francois de La Rochefoucauld17 quotes
Hypocrisy is the homage that vice pays to virtue. — Francois de La Rochefoucauld · 1678Absence diminishes mediocre passions and increases great ones, as the wind blows out candles and fans fires. — Francois de La Rochefoucauld · 1678In the misfortune of our best friends we often find something that is not displeasing. — Francois de La Rochefoucauld · 1678The head is ever the dupe of the heart. — Francois de La Rochefoucauld · 1678If we had no faults of our own, we would not take so much pleasure in noticing those of others. — Francois de La Rochefoucauld · 1678The pleasure of love is in the loving. We are happier in the passion we feel than in that we arouse. — Francois de La Rochefoucauld · 1678All 17 quotes →Marcel Proust17 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 · 1922The 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 · 1922We are healed of a suffering only by experiencing it to the full. — Marcel Proust · 1922Once I had recognized the taste of the crumb of madeleine soaked in her decoction of lime flowers which my aunt used to give me... Immediately the old gray house upon the street, where her room was, rose up like the scenery of a theater. — Marcel Proust · 1913Like everybody who is not in love, he imagined that one chose the person whom one loved after endless deliberations and on the strength of various qualities and advantages. — Marcel Proust · 1921There is not a woman in the world the possession of whom is as precious as that of the truths which she reveals to us by causing us to suffer. — Marcel Proust · 1922All 17 quotes →Moliere11 quotes
One is easily fooled by that which one loves. — Moliere · 1669He who lives without tobacco is not worthy to live. — Moliere · 1665It is public scandal that constitutes offence, and to sin in secret is not to sin at all. — Moliere · 1669Ah, it's a lovely thing, to know a thing or two. — Moliere · 1671Of all human follies there's none could be greater
Than trying to render our fellow-men better. — Moliere · 1666We only die once, and for such a long time! — Moliere · 1656All 11 quotes →Rene Descartes8 quotes
I think, therefore I am. — Rene Descartes · 1637I will devote myself sincerely and without reservation to the general demolition of my opinions. — Rene Descartes · 1641Good sense is of all things in the world the most equally distributed, for everybody thinks he is so well supplied with it, that even those most difficult to please in all other matters never desire more of it than they already possess. — Rene Descartes · 1637The reading of good books is like a conversation with the best men of past centuries-in fact like a prepared conversation, in which they reveal only the best of their thoughts. — Rene Descartes · 1637I could not possibly exist with the nature I actually have, that is, one endowed with the idea of God, unless there really is a God; the very God, I mean, of whom I have an idea. — Rene Descartes · 1641The greatest minds are capable of the greatest vices as well as the greatest virtues. — Rene Descartes · 1637All 8 quotes →Simone de Beauvoir8 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 · 1949I wish that every human life might be pure transparent freedom. — Simone de Beauvoir · 1945When 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 · 1949To tell the truth, one is not born a genius: one becomes a genius. — 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 · 1949To abstain from politics is in itself a political attitude. — Simone de Beauvoir · 1960All 8 quotes →Honore de Balzac7 quotes
In the desert there is all-and yet nothing…God is there and man is not. — Honore de Balzac · 1830Marriage must ceaselessly combat a monster that devours everything: habit. — Honore de Balzac · 1829Man is neither good nor bad; he is born with instincts and abilities. — Honore de Balzac · 1842Equality may perhaps be a right, but no power on earth can ever turn it into a fact. — Honore de Balzac · 1834A flow of words is a sure sign of duplicity. — Honore de Balzac · 1842Hatred is a tonic, it makes one live, it inspires vengeance; but pity kills, it makes our weakness weaker. — Honore de Balzac · 1831All 7 quotes →Victor Hugo7 quotes
An invasion of armies can be resisted; an invasion of ideas cannot be resisted. — Victor Hugo · 1878Music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent. — Victor Hugo · 1864Take away time is money, and what is left of England? Take away cotton is king, and what is left of America? — Victor Hugo · 1862Popularity? It is glory's small change. — Victor Hugo · 1838Great blunders are often made, like large ropes, of a multitude of fibers. — Victor Hugo · 1862One is not unoccupied because one is absorbed. There is visible labor and invisible labor. — Victor Hugo · 1862All 7 quotes →Anatole France6 quotes
You think you are dying for your country; you die for the industrialists. — Anatole France · 1922Man is so made that he can only find relaxation from one kind of labor by taking up another. — Anatole France · 1881The majestic equality of the law, which forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread. — Anatole France · 1894In every well-governed state, wealth is a sacred thing; in democracies it is the only sacred thing. — Anatole France · 1908To know is nothing at all; to imagine is everything. — Anatole France · 1881Rob him of his illusions, and man would perish of very weariness and despair. — Anatole France · 1922Andre Gide6 quotes
The most decisive actions of our life-I mean those that our most likely to decide the whole course of our future-are more often than not, unconsidered. — Andre Gide · 1926One doesn't discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time. — Andre Gide · 1925In the realm of the emotions, the real is indistinguishable from the imaginary. — Andre Gide · 1925True kindness presupposes the faculty of imagining as one's own the sufferings and joys of others. — Andre Gide · 1959Ah, 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! — Andre Gide · 1909The whole effect of Christianity was to transfer the drama onto the moral plane. — Andre Gide · 1925Jean-Paul Sartre6 quotes
I am condemned to be free. — Jean-Paul Sartre · 1943Hell is other people. — Jean-Paul Sartre · 1944When the rich wage war it's the poor who die. — Jean-Paul Sartre · 1951Human life begins on the far side of despair. — Jean-Paul Sartre · 1943Man, 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 · 1943Words…are loaded pistols. — Jean-Paul Sartre · 1948Napoleon Bonaparte6 quotes
Never interrupt your enemy when he's making a mistake. — Napoleon Bonaparte · 1805There is only one step from the sublime to the ridiculous. — Napoleon Bonaparte · 1812Think of it, soldiers; from the summit of these pyramids, forty centuries look down upon you. — Napoleon Bonaparte · 1823I want the whole of Europe to have one currency; it will make trading much easier. — Napoleon Bonaparte · 1807Religion is an all-important matter in a public school for girls. Whatever people say, it is the mother's safeguard, and the husband's. What we ask of education is not that girls should think, but that they should believe. — Napoleon Bonaparte · 1807In love, the only safety lies in flight. — Napoleon Bonaparte · 1820Anais Nin5 quotes
Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage. — Anais Nin · 1941The very touch of the letter was as if you had taken me all into your arms. — Anais Nin · 1932Electric flesh-arrows...traversing the body. A rainbow of color strikes the eyelids. A foam of music falls over the ears. It is the gong of the orgasm. — Anais Nin · 1937Sex loses all its power and magic when it becomes explicit, mechanical, overdone, when it becomes a mechanistic obsession. It becomes a bore. — Anais Nin · 1941I write about little things because the big ones are like abysses. — Anais Nin · 1934Charles de Gaulle5 quotes
How can you govern a country which has 246 varieties of cheese? — Charles de Gaulle · 1962France has lost a battle. But France has not lost the war. — Charles de Gaulle · 1940France cannot be France without greatness. — Charles de Gaulle · 1954Since those whose duty it was to hold the sword of France have let it fall, I have picked up its broken point. — Charles de Gaulle · 1940Whatever happens, the flame of the French resistance must not and shall not die. — Charles de Gaulle · 1940George Sand5 quotes
No human creature can give orders to love. — George Sand · 1834The whole secret of the study of nature lies in learning how to use one's eyes. — George Sand · 1869There is only one happiness in life, to love and be loved. — George Sand · 1862We cannot tear out a single page of life, but we can throw the whole book in the fire. — George Sand · 1837I would rather believe that God did not exist than believe that He was indifferent. — George Sand · 1896Henri Matisse5 quotes
Creativity takes courage. — Henri MatisseRenoir painted his whole life long, down to his very last day. He painted a little still life of fruit, in bed, the day before he died. — Henri Matisse · 1941What interests me most is neither still life nor landscape, but the human figure. It is through it that I best succeed in expressing the almost religious feeling I have towards life. — Henri Matisse · 1908I want anyone tired, worn down, driven to the limits of endurance, to find calm and repose in my painting. — Henri Matisse · 1913What I dream of is an art of balance, of purity and serenity devoid of trouble and depressing subject matter. An art which might be for every mental worker, be he businessman or writer, like an appeasing influence, like a mental soother, something like a good armchair in which to rest from physical fatigue. — Henri Matisse · 1908Henri Poincare5 quotes
Thought is only a gleam in the midst of a long night. But it is this gleam which is everything. — Henri Poincare · 1905To doubt everything and to believe everything are two equally convenient solutions; each saves us from thinking. — Henri Poincare · 1902The scientist does not study nature because it is useful to do so. He studies it because he takes pleasure in it, and he takes pleasure in it because it is beautiful. If nature were not beautiful, it would not be worth knowing, and life would not be worth living. — Henri Poincare · 1908Discovery is discernment, selection. — Henri Poincare · 1908Science is built up with facts, as a house is with stones. But a collection of facts is no more a science than a heap of stones is a house. — Henri Poincare · 1901J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur5 quotes
There is room for everybody in America; has he any particular talent or industry? He exerts it in order to procure a livelihood, and it succeeds. — J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur · 1782Men are like plants; the goodness and flavor of the fruit proceeds from the peculiar soil and exposition in which they grow. — J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur · 1782Here individuals of all nations are melted into a new race of men, whose labors and posterity will one day cause great changes in the world. — J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur · 1782What then is the American, this new man? He is either a European, or the descendant of a European, hence that strange mixture of blood, which you will find in no other country... Here individuals of all nations are melted into a new race of men, whose labors and posterity will one day cause great changes in the world. — J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur · 1782They are plants that will grow in any soil that is cultivated by the hands of others; and, when once they have taken root, they will extinguish every other vegetable that grows around them... The most ignorant, the most bungling member of that profession, will, if placed in the most obscure part of the country, promote litigiousness, and amass more wealth without labor, than the most opulent farmer with all his toils. — J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur · 1782Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin5 quotes
Alcohol is the prince of liquids, and carries the palate to its highest pitch of exaltation. — Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin · 1825Cooking is the most ancient of arts, for Adam was born hungry. — Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin · 1825The discovery of a new dish does more for human happiness than the discovery of a star. — Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin · 1825Tell me what you eat and I will tell you what you are. — Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin · 1825Your true amateur sips his wine; as he lingers over each separate mouthful, he obtains from each the sum total of pleasure that he would have experienced had he emptied his glass at a single draught. — Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin · 1825Alphonse de Lamartine4 quotes
O liberty! O liberty! What crimes are committed in thy name! — Alphonse de Lamartine · 1793O time, arrest your flight! and you, propitious hours, arrest your course! Let us savor the fleeting delights of our most beautiful days. — Alphonse de Lamartine · 1820Only one being is wanting, and your whole world is bereft of people. — Alphonse de Lamartine · 1820To love for the sake of being loved is human, but to love for the sake of loving is angelic. — Alphonse de Lamartine · 1849Antoine de Saint-Exupery4 quotes
It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eyes. — Antoine de Saint-Exupery · 1943Experience shows us that love does not consist in gazing at each other but in looking together in the same direction. — Antoine de Saint-Exupery · 1939Although human life is priceless, we always act as if something had an even greater price than life…but what is that something? — Antoine de Saint-Exupery · 1931Grown-ups never understand anything for themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them. — Antoine de Saint-Exupery · 1943Charles Baudelaire4 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 · 1867There can be no progress (real, that is, moral) except in the individual and by the individual himself. — Charles Baudelaire · 1867All that is beautiful and noble is the result of reason and calculation. — Charles Baudelaire · 1863There are as many kinds of beauty as there are habitual ways of seeking happiness. — Charles Baudelaire · 1846Eugene Delacroix4 quotes
The first virtue of a painting is to be a feast for the eyes. — Eugene Delacroix · 1863Cultivate a well-ordered mind, it's your only road to happiness; and to reach it, be orderly in everything, even in the smallest details. — Eugene Delacroix · 1823The beautiful implies a combination of many different qualities. Strength alone, without elegance, etc., is not beauty. In a single word, the broadest definition would be harmony. — Eugene Delacroix · 1854The artist who aims at perfection in everything achieves it in nothing. — Eugene Delacroix · 1850Georges Braque4 quotes
Truth exists; only lies are invented. — Georges Braque · 1952Art is meant to disturb, science reassures. — Georges Braque · 1952Light is a delicate thing. — Georges BraqueThe only valid thing in art is that which cannot be explained. — Georges Braque · 1957Jean de La Fontaine4 quotes
I bend but do not break. — Jean de La Fontaine · 1668I bend and I break not. — Jean de La Fontaine · 1668Death never takes the wise man by surprise; he is always ready to go. — Jean de La Fontaine · 1678Help thyself and Heaven will help thee. — Jean de La Fontaine · 1668Montesquieu4 quotes
Liberty is a right of doing whatever the laws permits. — Montesquieu · 1748If triangles were to make to themselves gods, they would give them three sides. — Montesquieu · 1721In most things success depends on knowing how long it takes to succeed. — Montesquieu · 1755Men should be bewailed at their birth and not at their death. — Montesquieu · 1721