France

Explore 470 quotes by people from France

Good sense is of all things in the world the most equally distributed, for everybody thinks he is so well supplied with it, that even those most difficult to please in all other matters never desire more of it than they already possess.

René Descartes

Discourse on Method

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Topic

Common sense

Author

René Descartes

Source

Discourse on Method

Genre

Philosophical literature

Language

French

Time

1637 1630s 17th century

Authentication Score 2

Original Citation

Descartes, René [published anonymously]. Discours de la Méthode: Pour bien conduire sa raison, et chercher la vérité dans les sciences [Discourse on Method: To Conduct Reason Well, and Seek Truth in the Sciences]. Leiden, 1637, pt. 1.

Current Citation

Descartes, René. Discourse on the Method, translated by Ian Maclean. Oxford University Press, 2008, pt. 1.

France cannot be France without greatness.

Charles de Gaulle

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Topic

France

Author

Charles de Gaulle

Source

L'Appel

Genre

Autobiography and memoir

Language

French

Time

1954 1950s 20th century

Authentication Score 3

Original Citation

De Gaulle, Charles. "L'Appel, 1940-1942." Mémoires de Guerre [War Memories]. c. 1954, ch. 1.

Current Citation

De Gaulle, Charles. The Complete War Memoirs of Charles De Gaulle. Carroll & Graf Pub, 1998, vol. 1, ch. 1.

I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: "Oh Lord, make my enemies ridiculous." And God granted it.

Voltaire

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Topic

Enemies

Author

Voltaire

Medium

Letter

Language

French

Time

1767 1760s 18th century

Authentication Score 1

Citation

Voltaire. Letter to Etienne Noel Damilaville. 16 May 1767.

It happens as with the cages: the birds without despair to get in, and those within despair of getting out.

Michel de Montaigne

Essays

On marriage.

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Topic

Marriage

Author

Michel de Montaigne

Source

Upon Some Verses of Virgil Essays

Medium

Essay

Language

French

Time

1580 1580s 16th century

Authentication Score 2

Original Citation

De Montaigne, Michel. "Sur des Vers de Virgile [Upon Some Verses of Virgil]." Essais [Essays]. Paris: Simon Millanges and Jean Richer, 1580.

Current Citation

De Montaigne, Michel. "On Some Lines of Virgil." The Complete Essays, edited and translated by M. A. Screech. Penguin Classics, 1993.

Democratic nations care but little for what has been, but they are haunted by visions of what will be; in this direction their unbounded imagination grows and dilates beyond all measure.... Democracy, which shuts the past against the poet, opens the future before him.

Alexis de Tocqueville

Democracy in America

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Topic

Democracy

Author

Alexis de Tocqueville

Source

Democracy in America

Genre

Political literature

Language

French

Time

1840 1840s 19th century

Authentication Score 2

Original Citation

Tocqueville, Alexis De. De La Democratie en Amerique [Democracy in America]. Vol. 2, London: Saunders and Otley, 1840, sect. 1, ch. 17.

Current Citation

Tocqueville, Alexis De. Democracy in America: The Complete and Unabridged Volumes I and II, translated by Henry Reeve. Bantam Classics, 2000, vol. 2, sect. 1, ch. 17.

Truly man is a marvelously vain, diverse, and undulating object. It is hard to found any constant and uniform judgement on him.

Michel de Montaigne

Essays

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Topic

Contradictory nature of man Nature of man

Author

Michel de Montaigne

Source

That Men by Various Means Arrive at the Same End Essays

Medium

Essay

Language

French

Time

1580 1580s 16th century

Authentication Score 2

Original Citation

De Montaigne, Michel. "Par Divers Moyens On Arrive a Pareille Fin [That Men by Various Means Arrive at the Same End]." Essais [Essays]. Paris: Simon Millanges and Jean Richer, 1580.

Current Citation

De Montaigne, Michel. "We Reach the Same End by Discrepant Means." The Complete Essays, edited and translated by M. A. Screech. Penguin Classics, 1993.

It is not rebellion itself that is noble, but its aims, even though its achievements are at times ignoble.

Albert Camus

The Rebel

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Topic

Rebellion Resisting authority

Author

Albert Camus

Source

The Rebel

Medium

Novel

Genre

Political literature

Language

French

Time

1947 1940s 20th century

Authentication Score 3

Citation

Camus, Albert. L'Homme Revolte [The Rebel]. Gallimard, 1951.

Lighter than a cork I danced on the waves.

Arthur Rimbaud

The Drunken Boat

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Topic

Ocean and sea

Author

Arthur Rimbaud

Source

The Drunken Boat

Medium

Poem

Statement Type

Metaphor, analogy and simile

Language

French

Time

1871 1870s 19th century

Authentication Score 3

Original Citation

Rimbaud, Arthur. "Le Bateau Ivre [The Drunken Boat]." Les Poetes Maudits, edited by Paul Verlaine. Paris, 1884.

Current Citation

Rimbaud, Arthur. "Le bateau ivre/The Drunken Boat." Rimbaud: Complete Works, Selected Letters, a Bilingual Edition, translated by Wallace Fowlie. University of Chicago Press, 2005.

For truth itself does not have the privilege to be employed at any time and in every way; its use, noble as it is, has its circumscriptions and limits.

Michel de Montaigne

Essays

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Topic

Nature of truth

Author

Michel de Montaigne

Source

Of Experience Essays

Medium

Essay

Language

French

Time

1580 1580s 16th century

Authentication Score 2

Original Citation

De Montaigne, Michel. "De l'Experience [Of Experience]." Essais [Essays]. Paris: Simon Millanges and Jean Richer, 1580.

Current Citation

De Montaigne, Michel. "On Experience." The Complete Essays, edited and translated by M. A. Screech. Penguin Classics, 1993.

Once I had recognized the taste of the crumb of madeleine soaked in her decoction of lime flowers which my aunt used to give me... Immediately the old gray house upon the street, where her room was, rose up like the scenery of a theater.

Marcel Proust

In Search of Lost Time

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Topic

Memory

Author

Marcel Proust

Source

Swann's Way In Search of Lost Time

Medium

Novel

Genre

Modernist literature

Language

French

Time

1913 1910s 20th century

Authentication Score 2

Original Citation

Proust, Marcel. Du côté de chez Swann [The Way by Swann's]. Paris: Grasset, 1913.

Current Citation

Proust, Marcel. Swann's Way, edited and translated by Lydia Davis. Penguin Classics, 2004.

The lyricism of marginality may find inspiration in the image of the "outlaw," the great social nomad, who prowls on the confines of a docile, frightened order.

Michel Foucault

Discipline and Punish

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Topic

Outsiders and outcasts

Author

Michel Foucault

Source

Discipline and Punish

Language

French

Time

1975 1970s 20th century

Authentication Score 3

Citation

Foucault, Michel. Surveiller et punir: Naissance de la prison [Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison]. Gallimard, 1975.

Extremes meet.

Louis Sebastian Mercier

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Topic

Horseshoe theory

Author

Louis Sebastian Mercier

Source

Tableau de Paris

Language

French

Time

1782 1780s 18th century

Authentication Score 1

Citation

Mercier, Louis-Sebastien. "Les Extremes se touchent." Tableau de Paris. Amsterdam, 1782, vol. 4, ch. 348.

Like everybody who is not in love, he imagined that one chose the person whom one loved after endless deliberations and on the strength of various qualities and advantages.

Marcel Proust

In Search of Lost Time

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Topic

Nature of love

Author

Marcel Proust

Source

Sodom and Gomorrah In Search of Lost Time

Medium

Novel

Genre

Modernist literature

Language

French

Time

1921 1920s 20th century

Authentication Score 3

Original Citation

Proust, Marcel. Sodom and Gomorrah. Paris: Grasset/Gallimard, 1921-1922.

Current Citation

Proust, Marcel. Sodom and Gomorrah, translated by John Sturrock. Penguin Classics, 2005.

Absence diminishes mediocre passions and increases great ones, as the wind blows out candles and fans fires.

François de La Rochefoucauld

Reflections

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Topic

Absence Missing someone

Author

François de La Rochefoucauld

Source

Reflections

Medium

Epigram

Statement Type

Metaphor, analogy and simile

Language

French

Time

1678 1670s 17th century

Authentication Score 3

Original Citation

La Rochefoucauld, Francois. Reflexions ou sentences et maximes morales [Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims]. c. 1665.

Current Citation

La Rochefoucauld, Francois. Collected Maxims and Other Reflections, translated by E. H. and A. M. Blackmore and Francine Giguere. Oxford University Press, 2008.

FIRST LAW: In every animal... A more frequent and continuous use of any organ gradually strengthens, develops and enlarges that organ... While the permanent disuse of any organ imperceptibly weakens and deteriorates it, and progressively diminishes its functional capacity, until it finally disappears.
SECOND LAW: All the acquisitions or losses wrought by nature in individuals... Are preserved by reproductions to the new individuals which arise.

Jean-Baptiste Lamark

Philosophie Zoologique

More information about this quote

Topic

Evolution

Author

Jean-Baptiste Lamark

Source

Philosophie Zoologique

Language

French

Time

1809 1800s 19th century

Authentication Score 3

Original Citation

Lamarck, Jean-Baptiste. Philosophie zoologique [Zoological Philosophy]. Paris: Musee d'Histoire Naturelle, 1809, pt. 1, ch. 7.

Current Citation

Lamarck, Jean-Baptiste. Zoological Philosophy, translated by Hugh Samuel Roger Elliott. Cambridge University Press, 2011, pt. 1, ch. 7.

Theory of the true civilization.
It is not to be found in gas or steam or table turning, It consists in the diminution of the traces of original sin.

Charles Baudelaire

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Topic

Civilization

Author

Charles Baudelaire

Language

French

Time

1867 1860s 19th century

Authentication Score 3

Original Citation

Baudelaire, Charles. Mon Coeur mis a nu [My Naked Heart]. Paris, 1887, no. 58.

Current Citation

Baudelaire, Charles. "My Heart Laid Bare." Late Fragments: Flares, My Heart Laid Bare, Prose Poems, Belgium Disrobed, translated by Richard Sieburth. Yale University Press, 2022, no. 58.

In the misfortune of our best friends we often find something that is not displeasing.

François de La Rochefoucauld

Reflections

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Topic

Schadenfreude Friends

Author

François de La Rochefoucauld

Source

Reflections

Medium

Epigram

Language

French

Time

1678 1670s 17th century

Authentication Score 1

Original Citation

La Rochefoucauld, Francois. Reflexions ou sentences et maximes morales [Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims]. c. 1665.

Current Citation

La Rochefoucauld, Francois. Collected Maxims and Other Reflections, translated by E. H. and A. M. Blackmore and Francine Giguere. Oxford University Press, 2008.

Electric flesh-arrows...traversing the body. A rainbow of color strikes the eyelids. A foam of music falls over the ears. It is the gong of the orgasm.

Anaïs Nin

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Topic

Sex

Author

Anaïs Nin

Source

Journals of Anaïs Nin

Medium

Personal journal

Language

English

Time

1937 1930s 20th century

Authentication Score 3

Citation

Nin, Anaïs. "October, 1937." The Diary of Anaïs Nin, vol. 2, 1934–1939, edited by Gunther Stuhlmann. Harcourt Brace & World, Inc., 1967.

Thought is only a gleam in the midst of a long night. But it is this gleam which is everything.

Henri Poincaré

The Value of Science

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Topic

Power of thought

Author

Henri Poincaré

Source

The Value of Science

Genre

Scientific literature

Language

French

Time

1905 1900s 20th century

Authentication Score 3

Original Citation

Poincare, Henri. Valeur de la Science [The Value of Science]. Flammarion, 1904, ch. 11.

Current Citation

Poincare, Henri. The Value of Science: Essential Writings of Henri Poincare, edited by Stephen Jay Gould. Random House Publishing Group, 2001.

To name an object is to take away three-fourths of the pleasure given by a poem. This pleasure consists in guessing little by little to suggest it, that is the ideal.

Jules Huret

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Topic

Names Poetry

Speaker

Stephane Mallarme [Etienne Mallarme]

Author

Jules Huret

Language

French

Time

1891 1890s 19th century

Authentication Score 1

Citation

Mallarme, Stephane. Quoted in "Sur l'Evolution Litteraire [On Literary Evolution]." Enquete de Huret [Investigation by Jules Huret]. Bibliotheque-Charpentier, 1891.