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A good critic is the man who describes his adventures among masterpieces.

Anatole France

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Anatole France
Age: 80 †
Born: 1844
Born: April 16
Died: 1924
Died: October 12
Biographer
Critic
Librarian
Literary Critic
Novelist
Poet
Prosaist
Science Fiction Writer
Writer
Paris
France
Jacques François-Anatole Thibault
François-Anatole Thibault
Anatole Thibault
Among
Masterpieces
Good
Describes
Men
Adventures
Masterpiece
Critic
Critics
Adventure
Criticism

More quotes by Anatole France

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It is remarkable how great an influence our clothes have on our moral state.
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The heart errs like the head its errors are not any the less fatal, and we have more trouble getting free of them because of their sweetness.
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Irony and pity are two good counselors: one, in smiling, makes life pleasurable the other, who cries, makes it sacred.
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We reproach people for talking about themselves but it is the subject they treat best.
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I cling to my imperfection, as the very essence of my being.
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There is a certain impertinence in allowing oneself to be burned for an opinion.
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An old philosopher said to Monsieur Coignard, a Reverend Father: 'You are a pig!' To which Abad Coignard answered: 'You flatter me, sir. But unfortunately, I'm only a man.'
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It is only the poor who pay cash, and that not from virtue, but because they are refused credit.
Anatole France
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I am a physician. I keep a drug-shop of lies. I give relief, consolation. Can one console and relieve without lying? ... Only women and doctors know how necessary and how helpful lies are to men.
Anatole France
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Irony is the gaiety of reflection and the joy of wisdom.
Anatole France
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It is by acts, and not by ideas, that people ensure the bar down the street cannot have a patio.
Anatole France
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Word-carpentry is like any other kind of carpentry: you must join your sentences smoothly.
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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.
Anatole France
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What we call happiness is what we do not know.
Anatole France
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We have never heard the devil's side of the story, God wrote all the book.
Anatole France
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It is almost impossible systematically to constitute a natural moral law. Nature has no principles. She furnishes us with no reason to believe that human life is to be respected. Nature, in her indifference, makes no distinction between good and evil.
Anatole France
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The faculty of doubting is rare among men. A few choice spirits carry the germs of it in them, but these do not develop without training.
Anatole France
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To die for an idea is to set a rather high price upon conjecture.
Anatole France
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People who have no weaknesses are terrible there is no way of taking advantage of them.
Anatole France
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Of all earthly creatures, humans alone have the power to choose. One must never lose time in vainly regretting the past nor in complaining about the changes which cause us discomfort, for change is the very essence of life.
Anatole France