“For a man’s life would become intolerable, if he knew what was going to happen to him. He would be made aware of future evils, and would suffer their agonies in advance, while he would get no joy of present blessings since he would know how they would end. Ignorance is the necessary condition of human happiness, and it has to be admitted that on the whole mankind observes that condition well. We are almost entirely ignorant of ourselves; absolutely of others. In ignorance, we find our bliss; in illusions, our happiness.”
― Anatole France, quote from The Gods Will Have Blood
“Yet, every now and then, there would pass a young girl, slender, fair and desirable, arousing in young men a not ignoble desire to possess her, and stirring in old men regrets for ecstasy not seized and now forever past.”
― Anatole France, quote from The Gods Will Have Blood
“After the usual politeness, the Citizen Brotteaux resumed the thread of his discourse:
'Those who make a trade out of foretelling the future rarely grow rich. Their attempts to deceive are too easily found out and arouse detestation. And yet it would be necessary to detest them much, much more if they foretold the future correctly. For a man's life would become intolerable, if he knew what was going to happen to him. He would be made aware of future evils, and would suffer their agonies in advance, while he would get no joy of present blessings since he would know how they would end. Ignorance is the necessary condition of human happiness, and it has to be admitted that on the whole mankind observes that condition well. We are almost entirely ignorant of ourselves; absolutely of others. In ignorance, we find our bliss; in illusions, our happiness.”
― Anatole France, quote from The Gods Will Have Blood
“But don't you ever tell me the Revolution will bring equality, because men'll never be equal. It's just not possible. They can turn the country upside down and inside out, there'll always be the big people and the little people, the fat ones and the thin ones.”
― Anatole France, quote from The Gods Will Have Blood
“I love reason, but my love does not make me a fanatic,' Brotteaux answered. 'Reason is our guide, a light to show us our way; but if you make a divinity of it, it will blind you and lead you into crime”
― Anatole France, quote from The Gods Will Have Blood
“We ought to love virtue; but it is well to realize that we ought to only because it is a convenient expedient invented by men in order that they may live comfortably together. What we call morality is simply and solely a desperate enterprise, a forlorn hope on the part of our fellow men to reverse the order of the Universe, which is constant strife and murder, blind, ceaseless and implacable. All is self-destruction, and the more I think of it, the more I am convinced that the the Universe is mad.”
― Anatole France, quote from The Gods Will Have Blood
“For our miserable species would never lavish worship on a just and benevolent God from whom they had nothing to fear; they would only feel an empty and thankless gratitude for their benefits. Without purgatory and hell, your God would indeed be a useless creature.”
― Anatole France, quote from The Gods Will Have Blood
“We should adopt his principles and govern men as they are and not as what we'd like them to be.”
― Anatole France, quote from The Gods Will Have Blood
“For you can always tell the gods by their appetite.”
― Anatole France, quote from The Gods Will Have Blood
Anatole France
Born place: in Paris, France
Born date April 16, 1844
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“Philosophy and the study of the real world have the same relation to one another as onanism and sexual love.”
― Karl Marx, quote from The German Ideology
“There is no binary division to be made between what one says and what one does not say; we must try to determine the different ways of not saying such things, how those who can and those who cannot speak of them are distributed, which type of discourse is authorized, or which form of discretion is required in either case. There is not one but many silences, and they are an integral part of the strategies that underlie and permeate discourses.”
― Michel Foucault, quote from The History of Sexuality, Volume 1: An Introduction
“It's true," He whispered.
Suddenly, I was aware of how close we were standing, so close I could touch the square of his jaw or the chiseled planes of his face.
"What's true?"
"You are as beautiful as I remembered. Nefer," he said, and his breath came quickly. "Perhaps you want to simply remain my friend, but when I was gone, all I could think about was you. When I was supposed to be thinking about the rebellion, or how my men would find fresh water in the desert, all I could think of was how you wanted to be hidden away in the Temple of Hathor. Nefer," he said passionately, "you can't be a priestess."
I wanted to close my eyes and step into the shelter of his embrace, but beyond the column the entire court was gathering.
"But if I'm not to be a priestess," I asked him, "where will my place be in Thebes?" I held my breath, waiting for the right answer to come, willing it into his heart. Then he took me in his arms and brushed his lips against mine.
"With me," he said firmly. "As my queen.”
― Michelle Moran, quote from The Heretic Queen
“Most people don't realize how sophisticated pool tables are. Yes, tables have bolts and staples on the rails but these suckers hold together mostly by gravity and by the precision of their construction. If you treat a good table right it will outlast you. Believe me. Cathedrals are built like that. There are Incan roads in the Andes that even today you couldn't work a knife between two of the cobblestones. The sewers that the Romans built in Bath were so good that they weren't replaced until the 1950's. That's the sort of thing that I can believe in.”
― Junot Díaz, quote from Drown
“Peace be with you," I said, and as I turned to resume my journey with Coyote, I added under my breath, "and asskicking be with me.”
― Kevin Hearne, quote from Hexed
Trial by Fire
The Twelve
Magic Rises
The Assassin's Curse
The Railway Children
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