Anatole France Quotes & Sayings (Page 5)

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

“Suffering! We owe to it all that is good in us, all that gives value to life; we owe to it pity, we owe to it courage, we owe to it all the virtues.”

“We reproach people for talking about themselves; but it is the subject they treat best.”

“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!”

“Devout believers are safeguarded in a high degree against the risk of certain neurotic illnesses; their acceptance of the universal neurosis spares them the task of constructing a personal one.”

“War will disappear only when men shall take no part whatever in violence and shall be ready to suffer every persecution that their abstention will bring them. It is the only way to abolish war.”

“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.”

“Never lend books, for no one ever returns them; the only books I have in my library are books that other folks have left me.”

“The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself a fool.”

“I prefer the folly of enthusiasm to the indifference of wisdom.”