Jean Anouilh Quotes

Tragedy is restful: and the reason is that hope, that foul, deceitful thing, has no part in it.

Men create real miracles when they use their God-given courage and intelligence.

Inspiration is a farce that poets have invented to give themselves importance.

With God, what is terrible is that one never knows whether it's not just a trick of the devil.

What you get free costs too much.

We poison our lives with fear of burglary and shipwreck, and, ask anyone, the house is never burgled, and the ship never goes down.

God is on everyone's side... and in the last analysis, he is on the side with plenty of money and large armies.

Poor little men, poor little cocks! As soon as they're old enough, they swell their plumage to be conquerors. If they only knew that it's enough to be just a little bit wounded and sad in order to obtain everything without fighting for it.

One cannot weep for the entire world, it is beyond human strength. One must choose.

Life is a wonderful thing to talk about, or to read about in history books - but it is terrible when one has to live it.

The object of art is to give life shape.

Saintliness is also a temptation.

When you are forty, half of you belongs to the past... And when you are seventy, nearly all of you.

It takes a certain courage and a certain greatness to be truly base.

An ugly sight, a man who is afraid.

A good actor must never be in love with anyone but himself.

What fun it would be to be poor, as long as one was excessively poor! Anything in excess is most exhilarating

I like reality. It tastes like bread.

Every man thinks God is on his side. The rich and powerful know he is.

It is restful, tragedy, because one knows that there is no more lousy hope left. You know you're caught, caught at last like a rat with all the world on its back. And the only thing left to do is shout - not moan, or complain, but yell out at the top of your voice whatever it was you had to say. What you've never said before. What perhaps you don't even know till now.

Listen, my friend, there are two races of beings. The masses teeming and happy - common clay, if you like - eating, breeding, working, counting their pennies; people who just live; ordinary people; people you can't imagine dead. And then there are the others - the noble ones, the heroes. The ones you can quite well imagine lying shot, pale and tragic; one minute triumphant with a guard of honor, and the next being marched away between two gendarmes

Until the day of his death no man can be sure of his courage.

Life is very nice, but it lacks form. It's the aim of art to give it some.