"Wandering re-establishes the original harmony which once existed between man and the universe"
About this Quote
The subtext is skeptical and gently mischievous. France was a novelist with a satirist’s allergy to solemn systems, and “re-establishes” reads like a wink at humanity’s grandiose belief that we can engineer our way back to innocence. He isn’t promising cosmic revelation so much as pointing to the psychological reset that happens when the mind stops treating the world as a problem to solve. To wander is to let the universe regain its scale; you stop being the manager of reality and become, temporarily, a participant in it.
Context matters: France wrote in a Europe being remade by industrial acceleration, imperial confidence, and the bureaucratic muscle of the modern state. “Harmony” here isn’t naive nature worship; it’s an implicit critique of the era’s aggressive rationalization of daily life. Wandering restores proportion. It interrupts the story that progress equals control, and suggests that meaning might return not through mastery, but through permeability - the self becoming less rigid, the world less instrumental, the cosmos less like a backdrop and more like a companion.
Quote Details
| Topic | Wanderlust |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
France, Anatole. (2026, January 18). Wandering re-establishes the original harmony which once existed between man and the universe. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/wandering-re-establishes-the-original-harmony-11764/
Chicago Style
France, Anatole. "Wandering re-establishes the original harmony which once existed between man and the universe." FixQuotes. January 18, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/wandering-re-establishes-the-original-harmony-11764/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"Wandering re-establishes the original harmony which once existed between man and the universe." FixQuotes, 18 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/wandering-re-establishes-the-original-harmony-11764/. Accessed 12 Feb. 2026.





