Welcome to our collection of quotes by Jean Anouilh
Wikipedia Summary for Jean Anouilh
Jean Marie Lucien Pierre Anouilh (French: [ʒɑ̃ anuj]; 23 June 1910 – 3 October 1987) was a French dramatist whose career spanned five decades. Though his work ranged from high drama to absurdist farce, Anouilh is best known for his 1944 play Antigone, an adaptation of Sophocles' classical drama, that was seen as an attack on Marshal Pétain's Vichy government. His plays are less experimental than those of his contemporaries, having clearly organized plot and eloquent dialogue. One of France's most prolific writers after World War II, much of Anouilh's work deals with themes of maintaining integrity in a world of moral compromise.
There will always be a lost dog somewhere that will prevent me from being happy.
Nobody has a more sacred obligation to obey the law than those who make the law.
The only immorality is not to do when one hast to do it.
Nobody has a more sacred obligation to obey the law than those who make the law.
Saintliness is also a temptation.
Men create real miracles when they use their God-given courage and intelligence.
Death is beautiful. It alone gives love its true habitat.
Hysterics are the hallmark of the production of genius. Insults are its common currency.
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.
We have found other terms far less vague than the old ones to designate the same complaints. It's a great advance linguistically.
It bothered me that whatever was waiting wasn't waiting for me.
The true masters of the art of living are already happy.
Life is a child playing round your feet, a tool you hold firmly in your grip, a bench you sit down upon in the evening, in your garden.
In your efforts to dazzle us your reasoning has gone awry. You know very well that love is, above all, the gift of oneself.
God! Is there anything uglier than a frightened man!
A happy love is full of quarrels, you know.
There will always be a lost dog somewhere that will keep me from being happy.
Our entire life, with our fine moral code and our precious freedom, consists ultimately in accepting ourselves as we are.
Don't make the mistake of believing it's enough to reproduce the realities of life.... The object of art is to give life a shape, and to do it by every conceivable artifice.
However tight I shut my eyes, there will always be a stray dog somewhere in the world who'll stop me being happy.
Life is very nice, but it has no shape. The object of art is actually to give it some and to do it by every artifice possible-truer than the truth.
Beauty is one of the rare things that do not lead to doubt of God.
C'est la grande faiblesse des hommes de projeter ce qu'ils ont refoulé en eux -- sur les autres.
Tragedy is clean, it is restful, it is flawless.
Beauty, real beauty, is something very grave. If there is a God, He must be partly that.
Inspiration? -- a hoax fabricated by poets for their self-importance.
One can make one's life a complete misery, worrying about burglaries and shipwrecks, but ask anyone, anyone you know ... earth-shattering disasters and fabulous inheritances all seems to take place exclusively in the newspapers.
Some men like to make a little garden out of life and walk down a path.
All children are sweet at five. But at twelve they begin to get silly.
All evil comes from the old. They grow fat on ideas and young men die of them.
Life is very nice, but it lacks form. It's the aim of art to give it some.
Death has to be waiting at the end of the ride before you truly see the earth, and feel your heart, and love the world.
Each of us has a day .. when he has to accept, finally, the fact that he is a man.
Believe me; all evil comes from the old. They grow fat on ideas and young men die of them.
Until the day of his death no man can be sure of his courage.
My part is not a heroic one, but I shall play my part.
Everything ends this way in France -- everything. Weddings, christenings, duels, burials, swindlings, diplomatic affairs -- everything is a pretext for a good dinner.
The object of art is to give life shape.
What fun it would be to be poor, as long as one was excessively poor! Anything in excess is most exhilarating.
When you are forty, half of you belongs to the past... And when you are seventy, nearly all of you.
A genius knows how to make himself easily understood without being obvious about it.
All evil comes from the old.They grow fat on ideas and young men die of them.
Have you noticed that life, with murders and catastrophes and fabulous inheritances, happens almost exclusively in newspapers?
I like reality. It tastes like bread.
Every man thinks god is on his side.
Tragedy is restful: and the reason is that hope, that foul, deceitful thing, has no part in it.
God is on everyone's side... and in the last analysis, he is on the side with plenty of money and large armies.
Love is, above all, the gift of oneself.
One cannot weep for the entire world, it is beyond human strength. One must choose.
The only immorality is not to do what one has to do when one has to do it.
With God, what is terrible is that one never knows whether it's not just a trick of the devil.
Until the day of his death, no man can be sure of his courage.
It takes a certain courage and a certain greatness to be truly base.
What you get free costs too much.
Talent is like a faucet, while it is open, one must write.
Beauty is one of the rare things which does not lead to doubt of God.
An ugly sight, a man who is afraid.
To say yes, you have to sweat and roll up your sleeves and plunge both hands into life up to the elbows. It is easy to say no, even if saying no means death.
Life has a way of setting things in order and leaving them be. Very tidy, is life.
Nothing is irreparable in politics.
Propaganda is a soft weapon; hold it in your hands too long, and it will move about like a snake, and strike the other way.
We poison our lives with fear of burglary and shipwreck, and, ask anyone, the house is never burgled, and the ship never goes down.
There is love of course. And then there's life, its enemy.
Inspiration is a farce that poets have invented to give themselves importance.
Oh, love is real enough; you will find it someday, but it has one archenemy -- and that is life.
Are you in earnest? Seize this very minute! Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Only engage, and then the mind grows heated. Begin, and then the work will be completed.
A good actor must never be in love with anyone but himself.
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.
Things are beautiful if you love them.
Our entire life -- consists ultimately in accepting ourselves as we are.