When a thing has been said and said well, have no scruple. Take it and copy it.
—Anatole France
Topics: Plagiarism
One must follow circumstances, use the forces about us, do in a word what we find to do.
—Anatole France
A writer is rarely so well inspired as when he talks about himself.
—Anatole France
Topics: Authors & Writing
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
It is well for the heart to be naive and for the mind not to be.
—Anatole France
Topics: Knowledge, Innocence
We have drugs to make women speak, but none to keep them silent.
—Anatole France
Topics: Drugs
What we call happiness is what we do not know.
—Anatole France
Topics: Happiness
Of all the sexual aberrations, chastity is the strangest.
—Anatole France
Topics: Sex
To die for an idea sets a high price on conjecture.
—Anatole France
Topics: Ideals
We do not know what to do with this short life, but we want another that will be eternal.
—Anatole France
Topics: Life
The books that everybody admires are those that nobody reads.
—Anatole France
Topics: Books, Reading
We reproach people for talking about themselves, but it is the subject they treat best.
—Anatole France
Topics: Ego, Self-Discovery, Egotism
The mania of thinking renders one unfit for every activity.
—Anatole France
Topics: Decisions
Human affairs inspire in noble hearts only two feelings—admiration or pity.
—Anatole France
Topics: Inspiration, Admiration, Respect
You become a good writer just as you become a good joiner: by planing down your sentences
—Anatole France
Topics: Writers
The duty of literature is to note what counts, and to light up what is suited to the light. If it ceases to choose and to love, it becomes like a woman who gives herself without preference.
—Anatole France
Topics: Literature
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
Never lend books, for no one ever returns them; the only books I have in my library are those which people have lent me.
—Anatole France
Topics: One liners, Unhappiness
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: Peace, War
In art as in love, instinct is enough.
—Anatole France
Topics: Artists, Arts, Art
It is not customary to love what one has.
—Anatole France
Topics: Blessings, Gratitude, Appreciation
The future is a convenient place for dreams.
—Anatole France
Topics: Dreams, Future
It is in the ability to deceive oneself that the greatest talent is shown.
—Anatole France
Topics: Deception, Talent
Chance is the pseudonym God uses when He does not want to sign His name.
—Anatole France
Topics: Chance
To accomplish great things, we must not only act but also dream. Not only plan but also believe.
—Anatole France
The greatest virtue of man is perhaps curiosity.
—Anatole France
Topics: Virtue, Curiosity
Innocence most often is a good fortune and not a virtue.
—Anatole France
Topics: Perspective, Innocence
Of all the ways of defining man, the worst is the one which makes him out to be a rational animal.
—Anatole France
Topics: Humanity, Humankind, Man
Never lend books, for no one ever returns them. The only books I have in my library are those that other folks have lent me.
—Anatole France
Topics: Libraries
What frightens us most in a madman is his sane conversation.
—Anatole France
Topics: Sanity
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
Jean Cocteau French Poet, Artist
Voltaire French Philosopher, Author
Victor Hugo French Novelist
Andre Gide French Novelist
Michel Houellebecq French Author
Gustave Flaubert French Novelist
Guy de Maupassant French Short-story Writer
Remy de Gourmont French Poet, Writer
Marcel Proust French Novelist
Jean-Paul Sartre French Philosopher