Top 180 Anatole France Quotes (2025 Update)

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

— Anatole France

Featured in: Excellence Quotes, Positive Work Quotes, Quotes About Dreams, Intelligent Quotes, Greatness Quotes

2. “Until one has loved an animal a part of one’s soul remains unawakened.”

— Anatole France

3. “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.”

— Anatole France

Featured in: Sad Quotes About Life

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

— Anatole France

5. “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.”

— Anatole France

Featured in: Anger Quotes

6. “Change is the essence of life.”

— Anatole France

7. “If we don’t change, we don’t grow. If we don’t grow, we aren’t really living.”

— Anatole France

8. “Nine tenths of education is encouragement.”

— Anatole France

9. “If a million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing.”

— Anatole France

10. “The wonder is, not that the field of stars is so vast, but that man has measured it.”

— Anatole France

11. “Do not try to satisfy your vanity by teaching a great many things. Awaken people’s curiosity. It is enough to open minds; do not overload them. Put there just a spark. If there is some good inflammable stuff, it will catch fire.”

— Anatole France

12. “It is well for the heart to be naive and the mind not to be.”

— Anatole France

13. “Dictionary: The universe in alphabetical order.”

— Anatole France

14. “You think you are dying for your country; you die for the industrialists.”

— Anatole France

Featured in: Country Quotes

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

— Anatole France

16. “Sometimes one day in a difference place gives you more than ten years of a life at home.”

— Anatole France

17. “We have never heard the devil’s side of the story, God wrote all the book.”

— Anatole France

18. “It is better to understand little than to misunderstand a lot.”

— Anatole France

19. “Stupidity is far more dangerous than evil, for evil takes a break from time to time, stupidity does not.”

— Anatole France

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

— Anatole France

21. “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

22. “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.”

— Anatole France

23. “The average man does not know what to do with this life, yet wants another one which will last forever.”

— Anatole France

24. “There are very honest people who do not think that they have had a bargain unless they have cheated a merchant.”

— Anatole France

25. “For every monarchy overthrown the sky becomes less brilliant, because it loses a star. A republic is ugliness set free.”

— Anatole France

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

— Anatole France

27. “True education is the ability to discern the difference between what you do know and what you don’t.”

— Anatole France

28. “The best sentence? The shortest.”

— Anatole France

29. “The more you say, the less they remember.”

— Anatole France

30. “The future is a convenient place for dreams.”

— Anatole France

31. “It is good to collect things, but it is better to go on walks.”

— Anatole France

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

— Anatole France

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

— Anatole France

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

— Anatole France

35. “Yet, every now and then, there would pass a young girl, slender, fair and desirable, arousing in young men a not ignoble desire to possess her, and stirring in old men regrets for ecstasy not seized and now forever past.”

— Anatole France

36. “There are no bad books any more than there are ugly women.”

— Anatole France

Featured in: Reading Quotes

37. “Man is so made that he can only find relaxation from one kind of labor by taking up another.”

— Anatole France

38. “It is by believing in roses that you make them bloom.”

— Anatole France

39. “The truth is that life is delicious, horrible, charming, frightful, sweet, bitter, and that is everything.”

— Anatole France

40. “We chase dreams and embrace shadows.”

— Anatole France

41. “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

42. “The Kingdom of Heaven is a military autocracy and there is no public opinion in it.”

— Anatole France

43. “An education which does not cultivate the will is an education that depraves the mind.”

— Anatole France

44. “The greatest virtue of man is perhaps curiosity.”

— Anatole France

45. “Wandering re-establishes the original harmony which once existed between man and the universe.”

— Anatole France

46. “History books that contain no lies are extremely dull.”

— Anatole France

47. “Intelligent women always marry fools.”

— Anatole France

48. “Unhappiness does make people look stupid.”

— Anatole France

49. “Existence would be intolerable if we were never to dream.”

— Anatole France

50. “If it were absolutely necessary to choose, I would rather be guilty of an immoral act than of a cruel one.”

— Anatole France