"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!"

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More quotes from: Anatole France

• "A person is never happy except at the price of some ignorance. "
• "All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind ..."
• "An education isn't how much you have committed to memory, or even how much you ..."
• "Chance is perhaps the pseudonym of God when he did not want to sign. "
• "Devout believers are safeguarded in a high degree against the risk of certain neurotic illnesses; ..."
• "Existence would be intolerable if we were never to dream. "
• "History books that contain no lies are extremely dull. "
• "I prefer the folly of enthusiasm to the indifference of wisdom. "
• "I thank fate for having made me born poor. Poverty taught me the true value ..."
• "If a million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing. "
• "If the path be beautiful, let us not ask where it leads. "
• "Ignorance and error are necessary to life, like bread and water. "
• "In art as in love, instinct is enough. "
• "Innocence most often is a good fortune and not a virtue. "
• "Irony is the gaiety of reflection and the joy of wisdom. "
• "It is better to understand little than to misunderstand a lot. "
• "It is human nature to think wisely and act in an absurd fashion. "
• "It is only the poor who pay cash, and that not from virtue, but because ..."
• "It is well for the heart to be naive and the mind not to be. "
• "It was one of the deadliest and heaviest feelings of my life to feel that ..."
• "Lovers who love truly do not write down their happiness. "

• "Nature has no principles. She makes no distinction between good and evil. "
• "Never lend books, for no one ever returns them; the only books I have in ..."
• "Nine tenths of education is encouragement. "
• "No government ought to be without censors; and where the press is free, no one ..."
• "Of all the sexual aberrations, chastity is the strangest. "
• "Of all the ways of defining man, the worst is the one which makes him ..."
• "Only men who are not interested in women are interested in women's clothes. Men who ..."
• "Religion has done love a great servive by making it a sin. "
• "Silence is the wit of fools. "
• "Suffering! We owe to it all that is good in us, all that gives value ..."
• "That man is prudent who neither hopes nor fears anything from the uncertain events of ..."
• "The average man does not know what to do with this life, yet wants another ..."
• "The books that everybody admires are those that nobody reads. "
• "The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself a fool. "
• "The good critic is he who relates the adventures of his soul among masterpieces. "
• "The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to ..."
• "The poor have to labour in the face of the majestic equality of the law, ..."
• "The pseudonym for God when He did not want to sign. "
• "The whole art of teaching is only the art of awakening the natural curiosity of ..."
• "There are very honest people who do not think that they have had a bargain ..."

• "To accomplish great things, we must not only act, but also dream; not only plan, ..."
• "To imagine is everything, to know is nothing at all. "
• "Wandering re-establishes the original harmony which once existed between man and the universe. "
• "We do not know what to do with this short life, yet we want another ..."
• "We reproach people for talking about themselves; but it is the subject they treat best. "
• "When a thing has been said and well, have no scruple. Take it and copy ..."
• "Without lies humanity would perish of despair and boredom. "
• "You learn to speak by speaking, to study by studying, to run by running, to ..."