Anatole France

“The whole art of teaching is only the art of awakening the natural curiosity of young minds for the purpose of satisfying it afterwards.”

“Lovers who love truly do not write down their happiness.”

“Chance is perhaps the pseudonym of God when he did not want to sign.”

“Time deals gently only with those who take it gently.”

“The poor have to labour in the face of the 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.”

“All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another.”

“In art as in love, instinct is enough.”

“Nine tenths of education is encouragement.”

“The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.”

“You learn to speak by speaking, to study by studying, to run by running, to work by working; in just the same way, you learn to love by loving.”

“Chance is perhaps the pseudonym of God when he did not want to sign.”

“To accomplish great things, we must not only act, but also dream; not only plan, but also believe.”

“That man is prudent who neither hopes nor fears anything from the uncertain events of the future.”

“Only men who are not interested in women are interested in women's clothes. Men who like women never notice what they wear.”

“To imagine is everything, to know is nothing at all.”

“It is the certainty that they possess the truth that makes men cruel.”

“In art as in love, instinct is enough.”

“No government ought to be without censors; and where the press is free, no one ever will. Chance is the pseudonym of God when he did not want to sign.”

“All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another.”

“It is by acts and not by ideas that people live.”

“A people under the menace of war and of invasion is very easy to govern. It does not claim social reforms, it does not cavil over armaments or military equipment. It pays without haggling, it ruins itself at it, and that is excellent for the syndicates, the financiers, and the heads of industry to whom patriotic terrors open an abundant source of gain.”

“You seem to have dreamt on the white stone, in the midst of the people of dreams, since you dreamt so long a dream in the course of so short a night.”

“An education isn't how much you have committed to memory, or even how much you know. It's being able to differentiate between what you know and what you don't.”

“Mael, a scion of a royal family of Cambria, was sent in his ninth year to the Abbey of Yvern so that he might there study both sacred and profane learning. At the age of fourteen he renounced his patrimony and took a vow to serve the Lord. His time was divided, according to the rule, between the singing of hymns, the study of grammar, and the meditation of eternal truths.”

“A beautiful fig-tree raised itself in a hollow of the island and thrust forth its branches far and wide. The inhabitants of the island used to worship it. And the holy Mael said to them: "You worship this tree because it is beautiful. Therefore you are capable of feeling beauty. Now I come to reveal to you the hidden beauty." And he taught them the Gospel. And after having instructed them, he baptized them with salt and water.”

“When the baptism of the penguins was known in Paradise, it caused neither joy nor sorrow, but an extreme surprise. The Lord himself was embarrassed. He gathered an assembly of clerics and doctors, and asked them whether they regarded the baptism as valid.”

“Jealousy is a virtue of democracies which preserves them from tyrants.”

“For the moment the peril was nowhere and yet everywhere. The majority remained solid; but the leaders became stiff and exacting.”

“Drink! The flies have not spoilt my vintage; the vines were dry before they came.”

“For the majority of people, though they do not know what to do with this life, long for another that shall have no end.”

“With impassive gaze, Michael, prince of warriors, measured the extent of the disaster, and his keen intelligence penetrated its causes. The armies of the living God had taken the offensive, but by one of those fatalities in war which disconcert the plans of the greatest captains, the enemy had also taken the offensive, and the effect was evident.”

“To accomplish great things, we must not only act, but also dream; not only plan, but also believe.”

“If the path be beautiful, let us not ask where it leads.”

“What can be more foolish than to think that all this rare fabric of heaven and earth could come by chance, when all the skill of art is not able to make an oyster!”

“All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another.”