Each one dreams the dream of life in his own way. I have dreamed it in my library; and when the hour shall come in which I must leave this world, may it please God to take me from my ladder—from before my shelves of books!...

— Anatole France

For the majority of people, though they do not know what to do with this life, long for another that shall have no end.

— Anatole France

I do not know any reading easier more fascinating more delightful than a catalog.

— Anatole France

If fifty million people say a foolish thing it is still a foolish thing.

— Anatole France

If the path be beautiful, let us not ask where it leads.

— Anatole France

If we don't change, we don't grow. If we don't grow, we aren't really living.

— Anatole France

Ignorance is the necessary condition, I do not say of happiness, but of life itself. If we knew everything, we could not endure existence a single hour. The sentiments that make it sweet to us, or at any rate tolerable, spring from a falsehood, and are fed on illusions. If, like God, a man possessed the truth, the sole and perfect truth, and once let it escape out of his hands, the world would be annihilated there and then, and the universe melt away instantly like a shadow.

— Anatole France

In art as in love, instinct is enough.

— Anatole France

In art as in love, instinct is enough.

— Anatole France

I never go into the country for a change of air and a holiday. I always go instead into the eighteenth century.

— Anatole France