“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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“And as men believe, so their world goes." - Merlin”
― Marion Zimmer Bradley, quote from The Mists of Avalon
“I don't like work--no man does--but I like what is in the work--the chance to find yourself. Your own reality--for yourself not for others--what no other man can ever know. They can only see the mere show, and never can tell what it really means.”
― Joseph Conrad, quote from Heart of Darkness
“So this is what I will do. I will gather together my past and look. I will see a thing that has already happened. the pain that cut my spirit loose. I will hold that pain in my hand until it becomes hard and shiny, more clear. And then my fierceness can come back, my golden side, my black side. I will use this sharp pain to penetrate my daughter's tough skin and cut her tiger spirit loose. She will fight me, because this is the nature of two tigers. But I will win and giver her my spirit, because this is the way a mother loves her daughter.”
― Amy Tan, quote from The Joy Luck Club
“I mean, d'you know what eternity is? There's this big mountain, see, a mile high, at the end of the universe, and once every thousand years there's this little bird-"
"What little bird?" said Aziraphale suspiciously.
"This little bird I'm talking about. And every thousand years-"
"The same bird every thousand years?"
Crowley hesitated. "Yeah," he said.
"Bloody ancient bird, then."
"Okay. And every thousand years this bird flies-"
"-limps-"
"-flies all the way to this mountain and sharpens its beak-"
"Hold on. You can't do that. Between here and the end of the universe there's loads of-" The angel waved a hand expansively, if a little unsteadily. "Loads of buggerall, dear boy."
"But it gets there anyway," Crowley persevered.
"How?"
"It doesn't matter!"
"It could use a space ship," said the angel.
Crowley subsided a bit. "Yeah," he said. "If you like. Anyway, this bird-"
"Only it is the end of the universe we're talking about," said Aziraphale. "So it'd have to be one of those space ships where your descendants are the ones who get out at the other end. You have to tell your descendants, you say, When you get to the Mountain, you've got to-" He hesitated. "What have
they got to do?"
"Sharpen its beak on the mountain," said Crowley. "And then it flies back-"
"-in the space ship-"
"And after a thousand years it goes and does it all again," said Crowley quickly.
There was a moment of drunken silence.
"Seems a lot of effort just to sharpen a beak," mused Aziraphale.
"Listen," said Crowley urgently, "the point is that when the bird has worn the mountain down to nothing, right, then-"
Aziraphale opened his mouth. Crowley just knew he was going to make some point about the relative hardness of birds' beaks and granite mountains, and plunged on quickly.
"-then you still won't have finished watching The Sound of Music."
Aziraphale froze.
"And you'll enjoy it," Crowley said relentlessly. "You really will."
"My dear boy-"
"You won't have a choice."
"Listen-"
"Heaven has no taste."
"Now-"
"And not one single sushi restaurant."
A look of pain crossed the angel's suddenly very serious face.”
― Terry Pratchett, quote from Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch
“چرا دشوارترین کار در جهان این است که پرنده ای را متقاعد کنی، آزاد است؟”
― Richard Bach, quote from Jonathan Livingston Seagull
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