Anatole France
Anatole France
Anatole Francewas a French poet, journalist, and novelist. He was born in Paris, and died in Saint-Cyr-sur-Loire. He was a successful novelist, with several best-sellers. Ironic and skeptical, he was considered in his day the ideal French man of letters. He was a member of the Académie française, and won the 1921 Nobel Prize in Literature "in recognition of his brilliant literary achievements, characterized as they are by a nobility of style, a profound human sympathy, grace, and a true...
NationalityFrench
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth16 April 1844
CountryFrance
We chase dreams and embrace shadows.
An education which does not cultivate the will is an education that depraves the mind.
Without lies humanity would perish of despair and boredom.
Ignorance and error are necessary to life, like bread and water.
There are very honest people who do not think that they have had a bargain unless they have cheated a merchant.
The good critic is he who relates the adventures of his soul among masterpieces.
It is only the poor who pay cash, and that not from virtue, but because they are refused credit.
What frightens us most in a madman is his sane conversation.
Irony is the gaiety of reflection and the joy of wisdom.
That man is prudent who neither hopes nor fears anything from the uncertain events of the future.
Of all the sexual aberrations, chastity is the strangest.
Of all the ways of defining man, the worst is the one which makes him out to be a rational animal.
For a man’s life would become intolerable, if he knew what was going to happen to him. He would be made aware of future evils, and would suffer their agonies in advance, while he would get no joy of present blessings since he would know how they would end. Ignorance is the necessary condition of human happiness, and it has to be admitted that on the whole mankind observes that condition well. We are almost entirely ignorant of ourselves; absolutely of others. In ignorance, we find our bliss; in illusions, our happiness.
It is only the poor who are forbidden to beg.