Top 53 Quotes & Sayings by Romain Rolland

I find war detestable but those who praise it without participating in it even more so.

A hero is a man who does what he can.

It is the artist's business to create sunshine when the sun fails.

If there is one place on the face of earth where all the dreams of living men have found a home from the very earliest days when man began the dream of existence, it is India.

Skepticism, riddling the faith of yesterday, prepared the way for the faith of tomorrow.

One makes mistakes; that is life. But it is never a mistake to have loved.

I know at last what distinguishes man from animals; financial worries.

The friend who understands you, creates you.

All these young millionaires were anarchists, of course: when a man possesses everything it is the supreme luxury for him to deny society: for in that way he can evade his responsibilities

Be reverent before the dawning day. Do not think of what will be in a year, or in ten years. Think of to-day.

The true Vedantic spirit does not start out with a system of preconceived ideas. It possesses absolute liberty and unrivalled courage among religions with regard to the facts to be observed and the diverse hypotheses it has laid down for their coordination. Never having been hampered by a priestly order, each man has been entirely free to search wherever he pleased for the spiritual explanation of the spectacle of the universe.

Let us return to our eagle's nest in the Himalayas. It is waiting for us, for it is ours, eaglets of Europe, we need not renounce any part of our real nature...whence we formerly took our flight.

The more a man lives, the more a man creates, the more a man loves and loses those whom he loves, the more does he escape from death. With every new blow that we have to bear, with every new work that we round and finish, we escape from ourselves, we escape into the work we have created, the soul we have loved, the soul that has left us.

When nothing hampers action, the soul has fewer reasons for action.

I would rather have this life of combat than the moral calm and mournful stupor of these last years. God give me struggle, enemies, howling crowds, all the combot of which I am capable.

Love of my country does not demand that I shall hate and slay those noble and faithful souls who also love theirs.

If a man is to shed the light of the sun upon other men, he must first of all have it within himself.

It is not peace that I seek, but life.

No one ever reads a book. He reads himself through books.

As a result of all his education, from everything he hears and sees around him, the child absorbs such a lot of lies and foolish nonsense, mixed in with essential truths, that the first duty of the adolescent who wants to be a healthy man is to disgorge it all.

Mozart was able to do what he wished in music and he never wished to so what was beyond him.

There is no joy other than the joy of creating. There is no man who is truly alive other than one who is creating. All others are just shadows on the earth with nothing to do with being alive. The joy of living, whether it is love or action, is the joy of creating.

You want to be a hero. That is why you do such silly things.

Every race, every art has its hypocrisy. The world is fed with a little truth and many lies.

The greatest book is not the one whose message engraves itself on the brain, as a telegraphic message engraves itself on the ticker-tape, but the one whose vital impact opens up other viewpoints, and from writer to reader spreads the fire that is fed by the various essences, until it becomes a vast conflagration leaping from forest to forest.

Theatre supposes lives that are poor and agitated, a people searching in dreams for a refuge from thought. If we were happier and freer we should not feel hungry for theatre. A people that is happy and free has need of festivities more than of theatres; it will always see in itself the finest spectacle.

One day History will pass judgment on each of the nations at war; she will weigh their measure of errors, lies, and heinous follies. Let us try to make ours light before her!

A great nation assailed by war has not only its frontiers to protect: it must also protect its good sense. It must protect itself from the hallucinations, injustices, and follies which the plague lets loose.

The artist is the compass which, through the raging of the storm, points steadily to the north.

There are some dead who are more alive than the living.

The theatre, like the fresco, is art fitted to its place. And therefore it is above all else the human art, the living art.

To understand everything is to hate nothing.

You desire a popular art? Begin by having a "people" whose minds are liberated, a people not crushed by misery and ceaseless toil, not brutalized by every superstition and every fanaticism, a people of itself, and victor in the fight that is being waged today.

Any man who is really a man must learn to be alone in the midst of others, to think alone for others, and, if necessary, against others.

If there is one place on the face of the earth where all the dreams of living men have found a home from the very earliest days when man began the dream of existence, it is India. For more than 30 centuries, the tree of vision, with all its thousand branches and their millions of twigs, has sprung from this torrid land, the burning womb of the Gods. It renews itself tirelessly showing no signs of decay.

Thousands of animals (now billions) are butchered every day without a shadow of remorse. It cries vengeance upon all the human race.

Religious faith in the case of the Hindus has never been allowed to run counter to scientific laws, moreover the former is never made a condition for the knowledge they teach, but there are always scrupulously careful to take into consideration the possibility that by reason both the agnostic and atheist may attain truth in their own way. Such tolerance may be surprising to religious believers in the West, but it is an integral part of Vedantic belief.

You are a vain fellow. You want to be a hero. That is why you do such silly things. A hero!... I don't quite know what that is: but, you see, I imagine that a hero is a man who does what he can. The others do not do it.

To a man whose mind is free there is something even more intolerable in the sufferings of animals than in the sufferings of man. For with the latter it is at least admitted that suffering is evil and that the man who causes it is a criminal. But thousands of animals are uselessly butchered every day without a shadow of remorse. If any man were to refer to it, he would be thought ridiculous. And that is the unpardonable crime.

The greatest human ideal is the great cause of bringing together the thoughts of Europe and Asia; the great soul of India will topple our world.

Let us seek truth everywhere; let us cull it wherever we can find its blossom or its SEED. Having Found the seed, let us scatter it to the winds of heaven. Where ever it may blow, it will germinate. There is no lack in this wide universe of souls that will form the new ground.

Discussion is impossible with someone who claims not to seek the truth, but already to possess it.

Take possession of the air, submit the elements, penetrate the last redoubts of nature, make space retreat, make death retreat.

Everyone, deep down within, carries a small cemetery of those he has loved.

Each man must learn his own ideal and try to accomplish it: that is a surer way of progress than to take the ideas of another.

Most men are essentially dead by thirty.

There is only one heroism in the world: to see the world as it is, and to love it.

History furnishes to politics all the arguments that it needs, for the chosen cause.

Leave your theories. All theories, you see, even those of virtue, are bad, foolish, mischievous.

There is only one necessary condition for the emergence of a new theatre, that the stage and auditorium should be open to the masses, should be able to contain a people and the actions of a people.

Everything is music for the born musician.

His (Swami Vivekananda) words are great music, phrases in the style of Beethoven, stirring rhythms like the march of Handel choruses. I cannot touch these sayings of his, scattered as they are through the pages of books, at thirty years' distance, without receiving a thrill through my body like an electric shock. And what shocks, what transports, must have been produced when in burning words they issued from the lips of the hero!

Passion is like genius: a miracle.