“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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“that the children of this generation have decayed with the ease of their lives, and that their great fortune has deprived them of any ambitions or real satisfactions.”
― Jean Sasson, quote from The Complete Princess Trilogy: Princess; Princess Sultana's Daughters; and Princess Sultana's Circle
“Halbuki komünist değildi Selim.
Düşünmemişti komünizmin ne olduğunu bile.
O sadece on sekiz yaşındaydı
ve yirmi beş kuruş yerine elli kuruş istiyordu
ve on dört saat yerine on saat.
Polis bu kanaatta değildi fakat.
Yatırdılar Selim'i yere.
Selim kalktığı zaman
basamıyordu döşemelere.
Yatırdılar Selim'i yere,
Selim kalktığı zaman
göremiyordu önünü artık.
Yatırdılar Selim'i yere,
Selim kalktı ve yığıldı.
Selim'in koltuklarına girip
karanlık bir odaya götürdüler.
Ve duvarda bir çiviye bağladılar saçlarından,
o suretle ki
döşemeye ancak ayak parmaklarının ucu dokunuyordu.
Bir tramvay geçti sokaktan gıcırtılarla.
Yakın bir yerde yatsı ezanı okunuyordu.
Çözdüler Selim'i çividen,
yatırdılar Selim'i yere.
Ve Selim kalktığı zaman
bir pencere gördü uzaktan
çok uzaktan ama
perdesiz karanlık bir pencere.
Atıldı ona doğru.
Camlar kırıldı şangırdayarak.
İlk önce kayboldu bir insan başı
sonra kayboldu iki ayak.”
― Nâzım Hikmet Ran, quote from Human Landscapes from My Country: An Epic Novel in Verse
“Some of us, in the words of the divine Greta Garbo, want to be alone.”
― Agatha Christie, quote from Mord im Orientexpress
“It never gets easier. Somehow, grief becomes a routine part of life. It never leaves, you simply learn to live around it. Looking”
― Nicola Haken, quote from Broken
“I drove back home. I missed her already.”
― Durjoy Datta, quote from Our Impossible Love
Clockwork Prince
City of Fallen Angel...
Uglies
The Silence of the L...
The Night Circus
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