Alain Quotes

An author of antiquity said that every event has two handles, and that, in order to carry it, there is no sense in choosing the one that hurts the hand.

One must preach life, not death; spread hope, not fear and cultivate joy, man's most valuable treasure. That is the secret of the greatest of the wise, and it wil be the light of tomorrow. Passions are sad. Hatred is sad. Joy destroys passions and hatred. Let us begin by telling ourselves that sadness is never noble, beautiful or useful.

We are advised and led along by second-rate moralists who only know how to work themselves into a delirium and pass their illness onto others.

Every menial condition is bearable as long as one can exercise authority over one's work and be assured that the job is permanent.

Work is the best and worst of all things; the best of it is voluntary, the worst of it is servile.

May the Gods, if they did not die of boredom, never give you one of those flat kingdoms to govern; may lead you through mountain paths; may they give you for a companion a good Andalusian mule with eyes like wells, a brow like an anvil, and who stops dead in his tracks because he sees the shadow his ears make on the road in front of him.

In short, the anomaly of war is that the best men get themselves killed while crafty men find their chance to govern in a manner contrary to justice.

Idleness is the mother of all vices, but also of all virtues.

Any kind of barbarism, once established, will last.

Humanity will have to extricate itself from the bags created by false moralists, according to whom we taste happiness and then pass judgment on it, as if it were a piece of fruit. But I maintain that even for a piece of fruit we can do something to help it taste good. This is even truer of marriage and every other human relationship; these things are not meant to be tasted or passively accepted; they must be made. A relationship is not like a bit of shade where one is comfortable or uncomfortable depending on the weather and the way the wind is blowing. On the contrary, it is a place of miracles, where the magician makes the rain and the good weather.

Politeness is for people toward whom we feel indifferent, and moods, both good and bad, are for those we love.

Everybody continually tries to get away with as much as he can; and society is a marvelous machine which allows decent people to be cruel without realizing it.

Our errors perish before we do. Let's not mummify them and keep them around.

We must clear away, simplify, eradicate.

In short, the important thing is to get started. No matter how; then there will be time to ask yourself where you are going.