Anatole France

"Those who have never entered upon a life of action can scarcely understand the power of toil."

"The flower fades, but the scent remains in our memory."

"Without tradition, art is a flock of sheep without a shepherd."

"The mind is like a river. It is too much a slave to its channels."

"Every good citizen makes his country rich, and so every patriot has to account himself in the end a capitalist for his country's interest."

"Of all the varieties of virtues, liberalism is the most beloved."

"Silence is the greatest respect one can show to another."

"The great facts of the world are not its wars, nor its achievements of mechanical power, but its thought."

"The only way to be content is to renounce everything."

"To love is to suffer. To avoid suffering, one must not love. But then, one suffers from not loving. Therefore, to love is to suffer; not to love is to suffer; to suffer is to be alive."

"We have the religion of humanity; that is the religion of the future."

"The pleasure of critics is in the hunt, not in the kill."

"The past cannot be changed. The future is yet in your power."

"A writer must have the courage to say what he thinks, even if the whole world says the contrary."

"Science is the domain of truth, and art is the domain of beauty."

"The mind of a teacher is the seed of all future growth."

"Our passions are the true judges of our intentions."

"There is nothing quite so nice as doing good by stealth and being found out by accident."

"The very ink with which history is written is merely fluid prejudice."

"All changes are more or less tinged with melancholy, for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves."

"Memory is the treasury and guardian of all things."

"Without tradition, art is a flock of sheep without a shepherd. Without innovation, it is a corpse."

"The success of a work of art is not a matter of its size, but of its quality."

"One's native land: one thinks of it as a unit, a fixed quantity; but when one is away from it, one sees it as infinitely complex."

"It is impossible to imagine a man who will work his whole life and not want better conditions."

"When a man makes mistakes, he should be corrected with gentleness, not severity."

"The scientist who loses his wonder is lost."

"To banish imperfection is not to create perfection."

"The charm of ancient ruin is that it is melancholy."

"A single day is enough to make us happy."