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
It is almost impossible systematically to constitute a natural moral law. Nature has no principles. She furnishes us with no reason to believe that human life is to be respected. Nature, in her indifference, makes no distinction between good and evil.
America, where thanks to Congress, there are forty million laws to enforce the Ten Commandments.
So long as society is founded on injustice, the function of the laws will be to defend injustice. And the more unjust they are the more respectable they will seem.
There is only one science, love, one riches, love, only one policy, love. To make love is all the law and the prophets.
The law ... allows rich as well as poor to sleep under bridges.
The law in its majesty prohibits rich and poor alike from sleeping under bridges.
The absurdity of a religious practice may be clearly demonstrated without lessening the numbers of people who indulge in it
Make love now, by night and by day, in winter and in summer... You are in the world for that and the rest of life is nothing but vanity, illusion, waste. There is only one science, love, only one riches, love, only one policy, love. To make love is all the law, and the prophets.
To accomplish great things, we must dream as well as act.
To die for an idea is to set a rather high price on conjecture.
We do not know what to do with this short life, yet we want another which will be eternal.
The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself a fool.
The average man does not know what to do with his life, yet wants another one which will last forever
It is well for the heart to be naive and for the mind not to be