5832 Quotes by French authors

French quotations distill life to its essences, lucidity sharpened by lyricism, irony tempered by tenderness. They favor brevity with bite: a moralist’s cool gaze, a poet’s warm breath, the philosopher’s challenge to habit. From café murmurs to salon sparkle, they weigh love against freedom, pleasure against duty, and fate against revolt. Expect paradox, esprit, and exacting beauty; a reverence for language’s clarity, yet room for ambiguity and doubt. These voices invite reflection without sermon, urging a cultivated, questioning savor of the everyday.

See the complete list of authors from France

"People protect what they love"

Jacques Yves Cousteau, Explorer

"Work spares us from three evils: boredom, vice, and need"

Voltaire, Writer

Small: Voltaire

"Behind every successful man stands a surprised mother-in-law"

Voltaire, Writer

Small: Voltaire

"No kingdom has shed more blood than the kingdom of Christ"

Charles de Montesquieu, Philosopher

Small: Charles de Montesquieu

"O reason, reason, abstract phantom of the waking state, I had already expelled you from my dreams, now I have reached a point where those dreams are about to become fused with apparent realities: now there is only room here for myself"

Louis Aragon, Poet

"My life has been full of terrible misfortunes most of which never happened"

Michel de Montaigne, Philosopher

Small: Michel de Montaigne

"Man cannot remake himself without suffering, for he is both the marble and the sculptor"

Alexis Carrel, Scientist

Small: Alexis Carrel

"Four hostile newspapers are more to be feared than a thousand bayonets"

Napoleon Bonaparte, Leader

Small: Napoleon Bonaparte

"When dictatorship is a fact, revolution becomes a right"

Victor Hugo, Author

Small: Victor Hugo

"The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread"

Anatole France, Novelist

"Every time I bestow a vacant office I make a hundred discontented persons and one ingrate"

Louis XIV, Royalty

"When the seagulls follow the trawler, it is because they think sardines will be thrown into the sea"

Eric Cantona, Athlete

"The Holy Roman Empire is neither Holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire"

Voltaire, Writer

Small: Voltaire

"Genius is the recovery of childhood at will"

Arthur Rimbaud, Poet

"When goods do not cross borders, soldiers will"

Frederic Bastiat, Economist

"Audacity, more audacity, always audacity"

Georges Jacques Danton, Revolutionary

Small: Georges Jacques Danton

"The fate of animals is of greater importance to me than the fear of appearing ridiculous; it is indissolubly connected with the fate of men"

Emile Zola, Novelist

"He who despairs of the human condition is a coward, but he who has hope for it is a fool"

Albert Camus, Philosopher

Small: Albert Camus

"No finite point has meaning without an infinite reference point"

Jean-Paul Sartre, Philosopher

Small: Jean-Paul Sartre

"Absence diminishes mediocre passions and increases great ones, as the wind extinguishes candles and fans fires"

Francois de La Rochefoucauld, Writer

Small: Francois de La Rochefoucauld

"To command is to serve, nothing more and nothing less"

Andre Malraux, Author

"Oscar Wilde: 'Do you mind if I smoke?' Sarah Bernhardt: 'I don't care if you burn.'"

Sarah Bernhardt, Actress

Small: Sarah Bernhardt

"It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong"

Voltaire, Writer

Small: Voltaire

"Take time to deliberate, but when the time for action has arrived, stop thinking and go in"

Napoleon Bonaparte, Leader

Small: Napoleon Bonaparte

"There are very honest people who do not think that they have had a bargain unless they have cheated a merchant"

Anatole France, Novelist

"The art of writing is the art of discovering what you believe"

Gustave Flaubert, Novelist

Small: Gustave Flaubert

"In order to stabilize world population, we must eliminate 350,000 per day"

Jacques Yves Cousteau, Explorer

"Myth is neither a lie nor a confession: it is an inflexion"

Roland Barthes, Critic

"There go my people, I must find out where they are going so I can lead them"

Alexandre Auguste Ledru-Rollin, Revolutionary

Small: Alexandre Auguste Ledru-Rollin

"Life is thickly sown with thorns, and I know no other remedy than to pass quickly through them. The longer we dwell on our misfortunes, the greater is their power to harm us"

Voltaire, Writer

Small: Voltaire

"Anything that is too stupid to be spoken is sung"

Voltaire, Writer

Small: Voltaire

"A leader is a dealer in hope"

Napoleon Bonaparte, Leader

Small: Napoleon Bonaparte

"When the rich wage war, it's the poor who die"

Jean-Paul Sartre, Philosopher

Small: Jean-Paul Sartre

"Nothing fixes a thing so intensely in the memory as the wish to forget it"

Michel de Montaigne, Philosopher

Small: Michel de Montaigne

"A good marriage would be between a blind wife and a deaf husband"

Michel de Montaigne, Philosopher

Small: Michel de Montaigne

"By the work one knows the workman"

Jean de La Fontaine, Poet

Small: Jean de La Fontaine

"Tyranny is always better organized than freedom"

Charles Peguy, Philosopher

"The true triumph of reason is that it enables us to get along with those who do not possess it"

Voltaire, Writer

Small: Voltaire

"It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets"

Voltaire, Writer

Small: Voltaire

"The world of reality has its limits; the world of imagination is boundless"

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Philosopher

Small: Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Page 2 of 146