Anatole France (1844–1924) was one of France’s most popular novelists and winner the 1921 Nobel Prize in Literature.
He was born François-Anatole Thibault but signed his works “Anatole France” as a tribute to his father’s bookstore in Paris. That bookstore, named Librairie de France, specialized in literature on the French Revolution. Many prominent French scholars frequented this bookstore and influenced Anatole’s philosophy.
Though Anatole mostly wrote historical and social novels, he’s best remembered for the fantasy novel L’Île des Pingouins (Penguin Island; 1908) It features an imaginary penguin civilization where a blind and somewhat deaf abbot mistakenly baptizes the penguins who then transform into human beings. Penguin Island is a satire on society and human nature in which Anatole lampooned morality, traditions, and the origin of law and religion.
Anatole France’s other prominent novels include Les dieux ont soif (The Gods Are Athirst, 1912) and La Révolte des anges (The Revolt of Angels, 1914.)
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Anatole France
Without the utopians of other times, men would still live in caves, miserable and naked;…utopia is the principle of all progress, and the essay into a better world.
—Anatole France
What men call civilization is the condition of present customs; what they call barbarism, the condition of past ones.
—Anatole France
Topics: Civilization
Chance is the pseudonym God uses when He does not want to sign His name.
—Anatole France
Topics: Chance
If the path be beautiful, let us not ask where it leads.
—Anatole France
Topics: One liners
To accomplish great things, we must not only act but also dream. Not only plan but also believe.
—Anatole France
It is by acts and not by ideas that people live.
—Anatole France
Topics: Action
Only men who are not interested in women are interested in women’s clothes. Men who like women never notice what they wear.
—Anatole France
Topics: Fashion
Man is so made that he can only find relaxation from one kind of labor by taking up another.
—Anatole France
Topics: Kind, Relaxation, Labor, Work
There are very honest people who do not think that they have had a bargain unless they have cheated a merchant.
—Anatole France
Topics: Cheating, Shopping
It is almost 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 difference between right and wrong.
—Anatole France
Topics: Nature, Morality, Morals, Evil
The average man does not know what to do with this life, yet wants another one which will last forever.
—Anatole France
Topics: Greed
The men are included in the eight million dollars.
—Anatole France
Topics: War
We do not know what to do with this short life, but we want another that will be eternal.
—Anatole France
Topics: Life
Let our teaching be full of ideas. Hitherto it has been stuffed only with facts.
—Anatole France
Topics: Teaching
The Sciences are beneficent. They prevent men from thinking.
—Anatole France
Topics: Science
Cicero was in politics a moderate of the most violent description.
—Anatole France
Topics: Politics
The dog is a religious animal. In his savage state he worships the moon and the lights that float upon the waters. These are his gods to whom he appeals at night with long-drawn howls.
—Anatole France
Topics: Dogs
To imagine is everything, to know is nothing at all.
—Anatole France
Topics: Imagination
Time deals gently only with those who take it gently.
—Anatole France
Topics: Patience, Resilience
Universal peace will be realized, not because man will become better, but because a new order of things, a new science, new economic necessities, will impose peace.
—Anatole France
Topics: War, Peace
It is in the ability to deceive oneself that the greatest talent is shown.
—Anatole France
Topics: Deception, Talent
The pseudonym for God when He did not want to sign.
—Anatole France
Topics: Chance
If fifty million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing.
—Anatole France
Topics: Fools, Foolishness
One must follow circumstances, use the forces about us, do in a word what we find to do.
—Anatole France
Wandering re-establishes the original harmony which once existed between man and the universe.
—Anatole France
Topics: Harmony
History books that contain no lies are extremely dull.
—Anatole France
Topics: History, Historians
Religion has done love a great service by making it a sin.
—Anatole France
Topics: Religion, Love
Night has come! Leaning from the window, we gaze at the vast sombre stretch of the city below us, pierced with multitudinous points of light. Jeanne presses her hand to her forehead as she leans upon the window-bar, and seems a little sad. And I say to myself as I watch her: All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves: we must die in one life before we can enter into another!
And as if answering my thought, the young girl murmurs to me.
My guardian, I am so happy; and still I feel as if I wanted to cry!
—Anatole France
Topics: Change
Irony is the gaiety of reflection and the joy of wisdom.
—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.
—Anatole France
Topics: Art, Education, Curiosity, Teaching
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