"We reproach people for talking about themselves; but it is the subject they treat best." -- Anatole France
Anatole France (16 April 1844...12 October 1924), born François-Anatole Thibault, was a French poet, journalist, and novelist. He was born in Paris, and died in Saint-Cyr-sur-Loire. He was a successful novelist, with several best-sellers. Ironic and skeptical, he was considered in his day the ideal French man of letters. He was a member of the Académie française, and won the Nobel Prize for Literature.
"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 us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another.""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 know and what you don't.""An education which does not cultivate the will is an education that depraves the mind.""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; their acceptance of the universal neurosis spares them the task of constructing a personal one.""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 of the gifts useful to life.""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 they are refused credit.""It is well for the heart to be naive and the mind not to be.""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 my library are books that other folks have left me.""Nine tenths of education is encouragement.""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.""Of all the sexual aberrations, chastity is the strangest.""Of all the ways of defining man, the worst is the one which makes him out to be a rational animal.""One thing above all gives charm to men's thoughts, and this is unrest. A mind that is not uneasy irritates and bores me.""Only men who are not interested in women are interested in women's clothes. Men who like women never notice what they wear.""Religion has done love a great service 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 to life; we owe to it pity, we owe to it courage, we owe to it all the virtues.""That man is prudent who neither hopes nor fears anything from the uncertain events of the future.""The average man does not know what to do with this life, yet wants another one which will last forever.""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 greatest virtue of man is perhaps curiosity.""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.""The poor have to labour in the face of the majestic equality of the law, which forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.""The truth is that life is delicious, horrible, charming, frightful, sweet, bitter, and that is everything.""The whole art of teaching is only the art of awakening the natural curiosity of young minds for the purpose of satisfying it afterwards.""There are very honest people who do not think that they have had a bargain unless they have cheated a merchant.""To accomplish great things, we must not only act, but also dream; not only plan, but also believe.""To imagine is everything, to know is nothing at all.""Until one has loved an animal a part of one's soul remains unawakened.""Wandering re-establishes the original harmony which once existed between man and the universe.""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.""We do not know what to do with this short life, yet we want another which will be eternal.""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!""What frightens us most in a madman is his sane conversation.""When a thing has been said and well, have no scruple. Take it and copy it.""Without lies humanity would perish of despair and boredom.""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."
The son of a bookseller, France spent most of his life around books. His father's bookstore, called the Librairie France, specialized in books and papers on the French Revolution and was frequented by many notable writers and scholars of the day. Anatole France studied at the Collège Stanislas, a private Catholic school, and after graduation he helped his father by working in his bookstore. After several years he secured the position of cataloguer at Bacheline-Deflorenne and at Lemerre. In 1876 he was appointed librarian for the French Senate.
Anatole France began his career as a poet and a journalist. In 1869, Le Parnasse Contemporain published one of his poems, La Part de Madeleine. In 1875, he sat on the committee which was in charge of the third Parnasse Contemporain compilation. He moved Paul Verlaine and Mallarmé aside of this Parnasse. As a journalist, from 1867, he wrote a lot of articles and notices. He became famous with the novel Le Crime de Sylvestre Bonnard (1881). Its protagonist, skeptical old scholar Sylvester Bonnard, embodied France's own personality. The novel was praised for its elegant prose and won him a prize from the French Academy. In La Rotisserie de la Reine Pedauque (1893) Anatole France ridiculed belief in the occult; and in Les Opinions de Jerome Coignard (1893), France captured the atmosphere of the fin de siècle.
He was elected to the Académie française in 1896.
France took an important part in the Dreyfus Affair. He signed Emile Zola's manifesto supporting Dreyfus, a Jewish army officer who had been falsely convicted of espionage. France wrote about the affair in his 1901 novel Monsieur Bergeret.
France's later works include L'Île des Pingouins (1908) which satirizes human nature by depicting the transformation of penguins into humans - after the animals have been baptized in error by the nearsighted Abbot Mael. La Revolte des Anges (1914) is often considered France's most profound novel. It tells the story of Arcade, the guardian angel of Maurice d'Esparvieu. Arcade falls in love, joins the revolutionary movement of angels, and towards the end realizes that the overthrow of God is meaningless unless "in ourselves and in ourselves alone we attack and destroy Ialdabaoth."
He was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1921. He died in 1924 and is buried in the Neuilly-sur-Seine community cemetery near Paris.
In 1922, France's entire works were put on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum (Prohibited Books Index) of the Roman Catholic Church. This Index was abolished in 1966.
"If the path be beautiful, let us not question where it leads."
"The history books which contain no lies are extremely tedious."
"I prefer the folly of enthusiasm to the indifference of wisdom."
"A person is never happy except at the price of some ignorance."
"The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread." (Le Lys Rouge)
"To accomplish great things, we must not only act but also dream, not only plan but also believe."
"Irony is the gaiety of reflection and the joy of wisdom."
"Wandering re-establishes the original harmony which once existed between man and the universe."
"For every monarchy overthrown the sky becomes less brilliant, because it loses a star. A republic is ugliness set free."
"She fought him off vigorously, scratched, cried that she will die before she submits, but the chevalier paid no attention to her words and took her. Afterwards, she smiled coyly and told him: "Do not think, dear chevalier, that you won me against my will. Better thank our good preacher who reminded me that we are mortal, and a pleasure missed today is missed forever. Now we can proceed, for I missed too many pleasures while being too prudent for my own good." (Fable by Anatole France.)
"Nine tenths of education is encouragement."
"All religions breed crime." (Thaïs)
"The people who have no weaknesses are terrible: there is no way of taking advantage of them." (The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard)
"It is human nature to think wisely and act in an absurd fashion."
"The whole art of teaching is only the art of awakening the natural curiosity of young minds for the purpose of satisfying it afterwards."
"Until one has loved an animal, a part of one's soul remains unawakened."
"Stupidity is far more dangerous than evil, for evil takes a break from time to time, stupidity does not."
"All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another."
"Of all sexual aberrations, chastity is the strangest."
"We have never heard the devil's side of the story, God wrote all the book."
"One must learn to think well before learning to think; afterward it proves too difficult."
