Top 35 Quotes & Sayings by François-René de Chateaubriand

Religion assures us that our afflictions shall have an end; she comforts us, she dries our tears, she promises us another life. On the contrary, in the abominable worship of atheism, human woes are the incense, death is the priest, a coffin the altar, and annihilation the Deity.

Justice is the bread of the nation; it is always hungry for it.

A master in the art of living draws no sharp distinction between his work and his play; his labor and his leisure; his mind and his body; his education and his recreation. He hardly knows which is which.

Something you consider bad may bring out your child's talents; something you consider good may stifle them.

One is not superior merely because one sees the world as odious.

Love decreases when it ceases to increase.

An original writer is not one who imitates nobody, but one whom nobody can imitate.

Every man carries within himself a world made up of all that he has seen and loved; and it is to this world that he returns, incessantly, though he may pass through and seem to inhabit a world quite foreign to it.

The heart feels, the head compares.

What importance can we attach to the things of this world? Friendship? It disappears when the one who is liked comes to grief, or the one who likes becomes powerful. Love? it is deceived, fleeting, or guilty. Fame? You share it with mediocrity or crime. Fortune? Could that frivolity be counted a blessing? All that remains are those so-called happy days that flow past unnoticed in the obscurity of domestic cares, leaving man with the desire neither to lose his life nor to begin it over.

Let us not disdain glory too much; nothing is finer, except virtue. The height of happiness would be to unite both in this life.

I value in the cat the independent and almost ungrateful spirit which prevents her from attaching herself to any one, the indifference with which she passes from the salon to the housetop. When we caress her, she stretches herself and arches her back responsively; but this is because she feels an agreeable sensation, not because she takes a silly satisfaction, like the dog, in faithfully loving a thankless master. The cat lives alone, has no need of society, obeys only when she pleases, pretends to sleep that she may see more clearly, and scratches everything on which she can lay her paw.

Alexander created cities everywhere he passed: I have left dreams everywhere I have trailed my life.

The original writer is not he who refrains from imitating others, but he who can be imitated by none.

As soon as a true thought has entered our mind, it gives a light which makes us see a crowd of other objects which we have never perceived before.

One does not learn how to die by killing others.

There is no religion without mysteries. God Himself is the great secret of Nature.

We must not always try to plumb the depths of the human heart; the truths it contains are among those that are best seen in half-light or in perspective.

The cat lives alone, has no need of society, obeys only when she pleases, pretends to sleep that she may see more clearly, and scratches everything on which she can lay her paw.

You are not superior just because you see the world in an odious light.

Every institution goes through three stages - utility, privilege, and abuse.

Forests were the first temples of the Divinity, and it is in the forests that men have grasped the first idea of architecture.

Perfect works are rare, because they must be produced at the happy moment when taste and genius unite; and this rare conjuncture, like that of certain planets, appears to occur only after the revolution of several cycles, and only lasts for an instant.

In living literature no person is a competent judge but of works written in his own language. I have expressed my opinion concerning a number of English writers; it is very possible that I may be mistaken, that my admiration and my censure may be equally misplaced, and that my conclusions may appear impertinent and ridiculous on the other side of the Channel.

There are two consequences in history; an immediate one, which is instantly recognized, and one in the distance, which is not at first perceived. These consequences often contradict each other; ... look to the end of an accomplished fact, and you will see that it has always produced the contrary of what was expected from it.

Achilles exists only through Homer . Take away the art of writing from this world , and you will probably take away its glory .

Talent is nothing but long impatience.

My downfall made a great noise: those who appeared most satisfied criticized the manner of it.

Music is the child of prayer, the companion of religion.

Forests precede civilizations and deserts follow them.

The most disastrous times have produced the greatest minds. The purest metal comes of the most ardent furnace; the most brilliant lightning come of the darkest clouds.

There is nothing beautiful or sweet or great in life that is not mysterious.

Atheism can benefit no class of people; neither the unfortunate, whom it bereaves of hope, nor the prosperous, whose joys it renders insipid, nor the soldier, of whom it makes a coward, nor the woman whose beauty and sensibility it mars, nor the mother, who has a son to lose, nor the rulers of men, who have no surer pledge of the fidelity of their subjects than religion.

A moral character is attached to autumnal scenes; the leaves falling like our years, the flowers fading like our hours, the clouds fleeting like our illusions, the light diminishing like our intelligence, the sun growing colder like our affections, the rivers becoming frozen like our lives--all bear secret relations to our destinies.

I am Bourbon as a matter of honour, royalist according to reason and conviction, and republican by taste and character.