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Love21 quotes
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 · 1939One of the best things about love is just recognizing a man's step when he climbs the stairs. — Colette · 1941Where true love is, it showeth; it will not feign. — Christine de Pizan · 1399There is only one happiness in life, to love and be loved. — George Sand · 1862Emma 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 · 1856Love comes from blindness,
Friendship comes from knowledge. — Roger de Rabutin, Comte de Bussy · 1665All 21 quotes →Art18 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 first virtue of a painting is to be a feast for the eyes. — Eugene Delacroix · 1863Art is meant to disturb, science reassures. — Georges Braque · 1952All 18 quotes →The human condition11 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 · 1662Every man bears the whole stamp of the human condition. — Michel de Montaigne · 1580Do 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 · 1759All 11 quotes →Freedom10 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 · 1856O liberty! O liberty! What crimes are committed in thy name! — Alphonse de Lamartine · 1793Man, 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 · 1943All 10 quotes →America9 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 · 1840Take away time is money, and what is left of England? Take away cotton is king, and what is left of America? — Victor Hugo · 1862I 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 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 · 1782All 9 quotes →Life9 quotes
Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage. — Anais Nin · 1941If it were possible to talk to the unborn, one could never explain to them how it feels to be alive, for life is washed in the speechless real. — Jacques Barzun · 1959Life is a horizontal fall. — Jean Cocteau · 1930Life is the farce which everyone has to perform. — Arthur Rimbaud · 1873Living is my job and my art. — Michel de Montaigne · 1580The value of life lies not in the length of days but in the use you make of them. — Michel de Montaigne · 1580All 9 quotes →God8 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 · 1662God is stupidity and cowardice; God is hypocrisy and falsehood. God is tyranny and poverty; God is evil. For as long as men bow before altars, mankind will remain damned, the slaves of kings and priests. — Pierre-Joseph Proudhon · 1846I 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 · 1641I have too much respect for the idea of God to make it responsible for such an absurd world. — Georges Duhamel · 1937God is on everyone's side…and, in the last analysis, he is on the side of those with plenty of money and large armies. — Jean Anouilh · 1952All 8 quotes →Nature of man8 quotes
I think, therefore I am. — Rene Descartes · 1637What 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 · 1670Truly man is a marvelously vain, diverse, and undulating object. It is hard to found any constant and uniform judgement on him. — Michel de Montaigne · 1580Man 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 · 1670Man, a subject which is marvelously vain, diverse, and like the waves of the sea. — Michel de Montaigne · 1580All 8 quotes →Human nature7 quotes
Man is neither good nor bad; he is born with instincts and abilities. — Honore de Balzac · 1842Do 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 · 1922The utmost renown never slakes a man's appetite and, unless he is a fool, he almost always dies uncertain of his own fame. — Gustave Flaubert · 1852All 7 quotes →Democracy6 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 · 1939Democracy is the worst form of government. It is the most inefficient, the most clumsy, the most unpractical... It reduces wisdom to impotence and secures the triumph of folly, ignorance, claptrap, and demagogy... Yet democracy is the only form of social order that is admissible, because it is the only one consistent with justice. — Robert Briffault · 1930Existence of God6 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 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 · 1641I have too much respect for the idea of God to make it responsible for such an absurd world. — Georges Duhamel · 1937I would rather believe that God did not exist than believe that He was indifferent. — George Sand · 1896If ignorance of nature gave birth to the Gods, knowledge of nature is destined to destroy them. — Baron d'Holbach · 1770Friendship6 quotes
If I am pressed to say why I loved him, I feel it can only be explained by replying: "Because it was he; because it was me." — Michel de Montaigne · 1580Love comes from blindness,
Friendship comes from knowledge. — Roger de Rabutin, Comte de Bussy · 1665If 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 · 1666It is wise to apply the oil of refined politeness to the mechanism of friendship. — Colette · 1932Relationships6 quotes
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 · 1939For we do not easily expect evil of those whom we love most. — Peter Abelard · 1132There is only one happiness in life, to love and be loved. — George Sand · 1862What you want baby, I got it
What you need, do you know I got it?
All I'm askin' is for a little respect when you come home. — Otis Redding · 1965He took it for granted that she was content; and she resented his settled calm, his serene dullness, the very happiness she herself brought him. — Gustave Flaubert · 1856In 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 · 1913Food5 quotes
Cooking 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 · 1825It's good food and not fine words that keeps me alive. — Moliere · 1672One should eat to live, and not live to eat. — Moliere · 1669Tell me what you eat and I will tell you what you are. — Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin · 1825Happiness5 quotes
There is only one happiness in life, to love and be loved. — George Sand · 1862You ask if they were happy. This is not a characteristic of a European. To be contented-that's for the cows. — Coco Chanel · 1990Happiness is beneficial for the body, but it is grief that develops the powers of the mind. — Marcel Proust · 1922Cultivate 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 · 1823Ah, 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 · 1909Man and animals5 quotes
It 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 · 1949The noblest conquest man has ever made. — Georges Louis Leclerc · 1753The more one gets to know of men, the more one values dogs. — Alphonse Toussenel · 1847Drinking 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 · 1784Man alone consumes and engulfs more flesh than all other animals put together. He is, then, the greatest destroyer, and he is so more by abuse than by necessity. — Georges Louis Leclerc · 1753Men and women5 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 · 1949God created man and, finding him not sufficiently alone, gave him a companion to make him feel his solitude more keenly. — Paul Valery · 1941To please women you either have to be carefree and play the fool or else be tragic and passionate. When you say to them quite simply that you love them, women laugh at you. — Gustave Flaubert · 1869In 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 · 1913Nature5 quotes
Let us give Nature a chance; she knows her business better than we do. — Michel de Montaigne · 1580You will find something more in woods than in books. Trees and stones will teach you that which you can never learn from masters. — St. Bernard of Clairvaux · 1147The 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 · 1908I have no other wish than a close fusion with nature. — Claude MonetAutumn is quite beautiful here but all the same has a funereal air, like all beautiful autumns-something like a funereal relaxation of things. — Marcel DuchampNature of love5 quotes
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 · 1939No human creature can give orders to love. — George Sand · 1834Like 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 · 1921You know very well that love is, above all, the gift of oneself! — Jean Anouilh · 1948Absence is to love what wind is to fire;
It extinguishes the small, it kindles the great. — Roger de Rabutin, Comte de Bussy · 1665Purpose of art5 quotes
The first virtue of a painting is to be a feast for the eyes. — Eugene Delacroix · 1863Art is meant to disturb, science reassures. — Georges Braque · 1952Human life is a sad show, undoubtedly: ugly, heavy and complex. Art has no other end, for people of feeling, than to conjure away the burden and bitterness. — Gustave Flaubert · 1864We 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 · 1818I want anyone tired, worn down, driven to the limits of endurance, to find calm and repose in my painting. — Henri Matisse · 1913Reason5 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 · 1771War5 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 · 1922It is easier to make war than to make peace. — Georges Clemenceau · 1919Being in love4 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 · 1688The right sort of love is recognized by the sort of joy, of general excitement, of exultant life which the presence of someone produces in us and which distinguishes them. You feel better when with them. — Paul ValeryMy heart was not in me but with you, and now, even more, if it is not with you it is nowhere. — Heloise · 1132Courage4 quotes
Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage. — Anais Nin · 1941Refuse 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 · 1925Creativity takes courage. — Henri MatisseDeath4 quotes
We shall die alone. — Blaise Pascal · 1662Anyone's death always releases something like an aura of stupefaction, so difficult is it to grasp this irruption of nothingness and to believe that it has actually taken place. — Gustave Flaubert · 1857Death never takes the wise man by surprise; he is always ready to go. — Jean de La Fontaine · 1678Autumn is quite beautiful here but all the same has a funereal air, like all beautiful autumns-something like a funereal relaxation of things. — Marcel DuchampDelusion4 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 · 1922Doubt and skepticism4 quotes
To doubt everything and to believe everything are two equally convenient solutions; each saves us from thinking. — Henri Poincare · 1902The skeptical are the most credulous. — Blaise Pascal · 1662Doubt is not a pleasant condition. But certainty is an absurd one. — Voltaire · 1770One of the meanings of human existence, the source of human freedom, is never to accept anything as definitive, untouchable, obvious, or immobile. — Michel Foucault · 1980Living life to the fullest4 quotes
Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage. — Anais Nin · 1941Whenever your life ends, it is all there. The advantage of living is not measured by length, but by use; some men have lived long, and lived little; attend to it while you are in it. It lies in your will, not in the number of years, for you to have lived enough. — Michel de Montaigne · 1580Living is my job and my art. — Michel de Montaigne · 1580The value of life lies not in the length of days but in the use you make of them. — Michel de Montaigne · 1580Moral theory4 quotes
Man is neither good nor bad; he is born with instincts and abilities. — Honore de Balzac · 1842What is beautiful is moral, that is all there is to it. — Gustave Flaubert · 1880It is public scandal that constitutes offence, and to sin in secret is not to sin at all. — Moliere · 1669All sins are attempts to fill voids. — Simone Weil · 1943Morality4 quotes
Man is neither good nor bad; he is born with instincts and abilities. — Honore de Balzac · 1842What is beautiful is moral, that is all there is to it. — Gustave Flaubert · 1880It is public scandal that constitutes offence, and to sin in secret is not to sin at all. — Moliere · 1669Liberty cannot be established without morality, nor morality without faith. — Alexis de Tocqueville · 1835