Jean Anouilh Quotes
French - Playwright June 23, 1910 - October 3, 1987

Things are beautiful if you love them.
Jean Anouilh

There is love of course. And then there's life, its enemy.
Jean Anouilh

Nothing is irreparable in politics.
Jean Anouilh

Our entire life - consists ultimately in accepting ourselves as we are.
Jean Anouilh

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.
Jean Anouilh

Oh, love is real enough; you will find it someday, but it has one archenemy - and that is life.
Jean Anouilh

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.
Jean Anouilh

Talent is like a faucet, while it is open, one must write.
Jean Anouilh

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

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

The only immorality is not to do what one has to do when one has to do it.
Jean Anouilh

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.
Jean Anouilh

Love is, above all, the gift of oneself.
Jean Anouilh

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.
Jean Anouilh

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

Some men like to make a little garden out of life and walk down a path.
Jean Anouilh

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

All evil comes from the old. They grow fat on ideas and young men die of them.
Jean Anouilh

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

I like reality. It tastes like bread.
Jean Anouilh

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

What you get free costs too much.
Jean Anouilh

A genius knows how to make himself easily understood without being obvious about it.
Jean Anouilh

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

Life has a way of setting things in order and leaving them be. Very tidy, is life.
Jean Anouilh

An ugly sight, a man who is afraid.
Jean Anouilh

Beauty is one of the rare things which does not lead to doubt of God.
Jean Anouilh

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

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

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

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

Every man thinks god is on his side.
Jean Anouilh

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

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

Have you noticed that life, with murders and catastrophes and fabulous inheritances, happens almost exclusively in newspapers?
Jean Anouilh