Top 180 Anatole France Quotes (2026 Update)
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101. “Our passions are ourselves.”

— Anatole France

102. “Caress your phrase tenderly; it will end by smiling at you.”

— Anatole France

103. “The first virtue of all really great men is that they are sincere. They eradicate hypocrisy from their hearts.”

— Anatole France

104. “That child whose mother has never smiled upon him is worthy neither of the table of the gods nor the couch of the goddesses.”

— Anatole France

105. “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 do know and what you don’t.”

— Anatole France

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

— Anatole France

107. “America, where thanks to Congress, there are forty million laws to enforce the Ten Commandments.”

— Anatole France

108. “I love reason, but my love does not make me a fanatic,′ Brotteaux answered. ‘Reason is our guide, a light to show us our way; but if you make a divinity of it, it will blind you and lead you into crime.”

— Anatole France

109. “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

110. “It is only the poor who pay cash, and that not from virtue, but because they are refused credit.”

— Anatole France

111. “When a history book contains no lies it is always tedious.”

— Anatole France

112. “I am but a miserable sinner, but I have found, in my long life, that the cenobite has no foe worse than sadness”.”

— Anatole France

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

— Anatole France

114. “God forbids suicide, and is unwilling that his creatures should destroy themselves.”

— Anatole France

115. “The heart errs like the head; its errors are not any the less fatal, and we have more trouble getting free of them because of their sweetness.”

— Anatole France

116. “It is remarkable how great an influence our clothes have on our moral state.”

— Anatole France

117. “The power of love itself weakens and gradually becomes lost with age, like all the other energies of man.”

— Anatole France

118. “An old philosopher said to Monsieur Coignard, a Reverend Father: ‘You are a pig!’ To which Abad Coignard answered: ‘You flatter me, sir. But unfortunately, I’m only a man.’”

— Anatole France

119. “Human affairs inspire in noble hearts only two feelings-admiration or pity.”

— Anatole France

120. “But don’t you ever tell me the Revolution will bring equality, because men’ll never be equal. It’s just not possible. They can turn the country upside down and inside out, there’ll always be the big people and the little people, the fat ones and the thin ones.”

— Anatole France

121. “When a thing has been said and said well, have no scruple. Take it and copy it.”

— Anatole France

122. “The books that everybody admires are those that nobody reads.”

— Anatole France

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123. “For you can always tell the gods by their appetite.”

— Anatole France

124. “The sadness of churches at night moves me; I feel in them the grandeur of nothingness.”

— Anatole France

125. “To die for an idea is to set a rather high price upon conjecture.”

— Anatole France

126. “Have we not seen many times indeed human beings who, poor and naked, prostrate themselves before all the phantoms of fear, and rather than follow the teaching of well-disposed demons, obey the commandments of cruel demiurges?”

— Anatole France

127. “Justice is the means by which established injustices are sanctioned.”

— Anatole France

128. “The finest words in the world are only vain sounds if you can’t understand them. The best sentence? The shortest.”

— Anatole France

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

— Anatole France

130. “It is not easy to be a pretty woman without causing mischief.”

— Anatole France

131. “Word-carpentry is like any other kind of carpentry: you must join your sentences smoothly.”

— Anatole France

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

— Anatole France

133. “The law in its majesty prohibits rich and poor alike from sleeping under bridges.”

— Anatole France

134. “A woman without breasts is like a bed without pillows.”

— Anatole France

135. “The good critic is he who relates the adventures of his soul among masterpieces.”

— Anatole France

136. “The law, in its majestic impartiality, forbids the rich and poor alike to sleep under the bridges of Paris.”

— Anatole France

137. “Armenia is dying, but it will survive. The little blood that it still has left is precious blood that will give birth to a heroic generation. A nation that does not want to die, does not die.”

— Anatole France

138. “The Arab who built himself a hut with marbles from the temple of Palmyra is more philosophical than all the curators of the museums of London, Paris, and Munich.”

— Anatole France

139. “Those who have given themselves the most concern about the happiness of peoples have made their neighbors very miserable.”

— Anatole France

140. “In order that knowledge be properly digested it must have been swallowed with a good appetite.”

— Anatole France

141. “Truth possesses within herself a penetrating force, unknown alike to error and falsehood. I say ‘truth’ and you understand my meaning. For the beautiful words truth and justice need not to be defined in order to be understood in their true sense.”

— Anatole France

142. “When it does not yield to the rudder,” said he to them, “the ship yields to the rock.”

— Anatole France

143. “The man of science multiples the points of contact between man and nature.”

— Anatole France

144. “It is not customary to love what one has.”

— Anatole France

145. “The mania of thinking renders one unfit for every activity.”

— Anatole France

146. “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.”

— Anatole France

147. “One thing above all gives charm to men’s thoughts, and this is unrest. A mind that is not uneasy irritates and bores me.”

— Anatole France

148. “Play is hand-to-hand encounter with Fate.”

— Anatole France

149. “He flattered himself on being a man without any prejudices; and this pretension itself is a very great prejudice.”

— Anatole France

150. “There is a certain impertinence in allowing oneself to be burned for an opinion.”

— Anatole France