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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 →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 →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 →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 · 1948Charles 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 · 1846Andre Malraux3 quotes
The sons of torture-victims make good terrorists. — Andre Malraux · 1933The 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 · 1943The extermination camps, in endeavoring to turn man into a beast, intimated that it is not life alone which makes him man. — Andre Malraux · 1967Gerard de Nerval3 quotes
Every flower is a soul blossoming in nature. — Gerard de Nerval · 1843Dreams are a second life. I have never been able to cross through those gates of ivory or horn which separate us from the invisible world without a sense of dread. — Gerard de Nerval · 1855God is dead! Heaven is empty-Weep, children,
You no longer have a father. — Gerard de Nerval · 1854Jean de La Bruyere3 quotes
We love well only once, the first time. The loves which follow are less involuntary. — Jean de La Bruyere · 1688Time, which strengthens friendship, weakens love. — Jean de La Bruyere · 1688Between good sense and good taste there is the same difference as between cause and effect. — Jean de La Bruyere · 1688Paul Gauguin3 quotes
In art, there are only two types of people: revolutionaries and plagiarists. — Paul Gauguin · 1895Whom one gets into bed with is no light matter. — Paul GauguinA 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. — Paul Gauguin · 1888Simone Weil3 quotes
Force is as pitiless to the man who possesses it, or thinks he does, as it is to its victims; the second it crushes, the first it intoxicates. The truth is, nobody really possesses it. — Simone Weil · 1940All sins are attempts to fill voids. — Simone Weil · 1943Refuse to be an accomplice. — Simone Weil · 1933Auguste Rodin2 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 · 1910Charles d'Orleans2 quotes
I am dying of thirst by the side of the fountain. — Charles d'Orleans · 1440The season has shed its mantle of wind and chill and rain. — Charles d'Orleans · 1440Christine de Pizan2 quotes
Where true love is, it showeth; it will not feign. — Christine de Pizan · 1399I 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 · 1405Claude Adrien Helvetius2 quotes
When prejudice commands, reason is silent. — Claude Adrien Helvetius · 1771Education makes us what we are. — Claude Adrien Helvetius · 1758Emile Zola2 quotes
Truth is on the march, and nothing will stop it. — Emile Zola · 1897I would rather die of passion than of boredom. — Emile Zola · 1883Pierre Beaumarchais2 quotes
With love, you see, even too much is not enough. — Pierre Beaumarchais · 1784Drinking when we are not thirsty and making love all year round madam; that is all there is to distinguish us from other animals. — Pierre Beaumarchais · 1784Stephane Mallarme2 quotes
To name an object is to take away three-fourths of the pleasure given by a poem. This pleasure consists in guessing little by little to suggest it, that is the ideal. — Stephane Mallarme · 1891Poetry is the expression, in human language restored to its essential rhythm, of the mysterious meaning of the aspects of existence: in this way it confers authenticity on our time on earth and constitutes the only spiritual task there is. — Stephane Mallarme · 1884Alain Finkielkraut1 quote
Civilized people must get off their high horse and learn with humble lucidity that they too are an indigenous variety. — Alain Finkielkraut · 1988Alfred de Musset1 quote
The most despairing songs are the loveliest of all,
I know immortal ones composed only of tears. — Alfred de Musset · 1835Alphonse Karr1 quote
The more things change, the more they are the same. — Alphonse Karr · 1849Antoine Lavoisier1 quote
We must trust to nothing but facts: these are presented to us by nature and cannot deceive. — Antoine Lavoisier · 1789Ariane Mnouchkine1 quote
A cultural Chernobyl. — Ariane Mnouchkine · 1992Baron Pierre de Coubertin1 quote
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 · 1908Baron d'Holbach1 quote
If ignorance of nature gave birth to the Gods, knowledge of nature is destined to destroy them. — Baron d'Holbach · 1770