Anatole France

"I have always been of the opinion that hard work is simply gathered dust in the face of true talent."

"One cannot be deeply responsive to the world without being saddened very often."

"It is impossible to be just if one is not generous."

"The public has neither shame nor gratitude."

"To be content with little is difficult; to be content with much is impossible."

"A person who refuses to do arithmetic is a person who refuses to think."

"The charm of life is that it is tragic and fleeting."

"Devotion to an improbable dream sustains us through the impossible."

"The greatest delight which the fields and woods minister is the suggestion of an occult relation between man and the vegetable."

"When scholars and critics speak harshly, they often speak from places of pain."

"I prefer the natural style of argument to be that of reality."

"Freedom of conscience is not compatible with loyalty to any temporal power."

"To forgive is to set free two prisoners: the other person and yourself."

"The real weapon of Socrates was irony, the weapon of every honest man."

"Success is the child of audacity; that much is certain."

"The illusion is the one thing that liberates us from reality."

"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."

"Man is so made that he can only find relaxation from one kind of labour by taking up another."

"It is human nature to think wisely and to act in an old-fashioned way."

"To understand is to forgive, even oneself."

"The tree of knowledge is not the tree of life. Knowledge is good, but there are higher things than knowledge."

"A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. The man who never reads lives only one."

"Without the Greeks, we would not have Greek thought, which means that without the Greeks, we would not think at all."

"The good critic is he who relates the adventures of his soul amidst masterpieces."

"Every time we pray to God, we are merely talking to ourselves. But this can still be helpful."

"The human spirit is so constituted that it can gain great difficulty by laughing at it."

"We have better discourse with the ancients than with our contemporaries."

"I am incapable of defining metaphysics, but it suffices to say that it is what everyone can understand by the word."

"People who ask our advice almost never take it. Yet we ought to be generous and pass it around anyway."

"It is forbidden to forbid, but it is not forbidden to forgive."