Anatole France

When a thing has been said and well, have no scruple. Take it and copy it.

It is well for the heart to be naive and the mind not to be.

Irony is the gaiety of reflection and the joy of wisdom.

I thank fate for having made me born poor. Poverty taught me the true value of the gifts useful to life.

Nature has no principles. She makes no distinction between good and evil.

It is human nature to think wisely and act in an absurd fashion.

The whole art of teaching is only the art of awakening the natural curiosity of young minds for the purpose of satisfying it afterwards.

An education isn't how much you have committed to memory, or even how much you know. It's being able to differentiate between what you know and what you don't.

An education which does not cultivate the will is an education that depraves the mind.

Nine tenths of education is encouragement.

You learn to speak by speaking, to study by studying, to run by running, to work by working; in just the same way, you learn to love by loving.

That man is prudent who neither hopes nor fears anything from the uncertain events of the future.