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Man is a rational animal. He can think up a reason for anything he wants to believe.

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
Animal
Anything
Reason
Believe
Men
Think
Thinking
Rational
Wants

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Sometimes one day in a difference place gives you more than ten years of a life at home.
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Existence would be intolerable if we were never to dream.
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In art as in love, instinct is enough.
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The first virtue of all really great men is that they are sincere. They eradicate hypocrisy from their hearts.
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The duty of literature is to note what counts, and to light up what is suited to the light. If it ceases to choose and to love, it becomes like a woman who gives herself without preference.
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To die for an idea is to set a rather high price upon conjecture.
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That child whose mother has never smiled upon him is worthy neither of the table of the gods nor the couch of the goddesses.
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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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For every monarchy overthrown the sky becomes less brilliant, because it loses a star. A republic is ugliness set free.
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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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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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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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Irony is the gaiety of reflection and the joy of wisdom.
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God, conquered, will become Satan Satan, conquering, will become God. May the fates spare me this terrible lot I love the Hell which formed my genius. I love the Earth where I have done some good, if it be possible to do any good in this fearful world where beings live but by rapine.
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It is remarkable how great an influence our clothes have on our moral state.
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I thank fate for having made me born poor. Poverty taught me the true value of the gifts useful to life.
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Silence is the wit of fools.
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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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It is by acts, and not by ideas, that people ensure the bar down the street cannot have a patio.
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The mania of thinking renders one unfit for every activity.
Anatole France