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When a history book contains no lies it is always tedious.

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
Always
Tedious
Contains
Lies
Lying
History
Book

More quotes by 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.
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The finest words in the world are only vain sounds if you can't understand them. The best sentence? The shortest.
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It is not easy to be a pretty woman without causing mischief.
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There is only one science, love, one riches, love, only one policy, love. To make love is all the law and the prophets.
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The good critic is he who relates the adventures of his soul among masterpieces.
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A person is never happy except at the price of some ignorance. [The ability to focus on positives and distract your mind from negatives for at least a time is a necessary skill for being happy.]
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A person is never happy except at the price of some ignorance.
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Without the Utopians of other times, men would still live in caves, miserable and naked. It was Utopians who traced the lines of the first City.....Out of generous dreams come beneficial realities. Utopia is the principle of all progress, and the essay into a better future.
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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.
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Never lend books, for no one ever returns them
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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.
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If the path be beautiful, let us not ask where it leads.
Anatole France
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Good angels are fallible ... they sin every day and fall from Heaven like flies.
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One thing above all gives charm to men's thoughts, and this is unrest. A mind that is not uneasy irritates and bores me.
Anatole France
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Ugly women may be naturally quite as capricious as pretty ones but as they are never petted and spoiled, and as no allowances are made for them, they soon find themselves obliged either to suppress their whims or to hide them.
Anatole France
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Innocence most often is a good fortune and not a virtue.
Anatole France
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Distrust even Mathematics albeit so sublime and highly perfected, we have here a machine of such delicacy it can only work in vacuo, and one grain of sand in the wheels is enough to put everything out of gear. One shudders to think to what disaster such a grain of sand may bring a Mathematical brain. Remember Pascal.
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The wonder is, not that the field of stars is so vast, but that man has measured it.
Anatole France
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The Kingdom of Heaven is a military autocracy and there is no public opinion in it.
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In truth man is made rather to eat ices than to pore over old texts.
Anatole France