Jean Anouilh Quotes & Sayings

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

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

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

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

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

In matters of money there's no such thing as enough. — Jean Anouilh

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

One can be a patriot, you know, without making one's wife join the breadline. — Jean Anouilh

There will always be a lost dog somewhere that will keep me from being happy. — Jean Anouilh

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. — Jean Anouilh

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

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. — Jean Anouilh

Inspiration? - a hoax fabricated by poets for their self-importance. — Jean Anouilh

Each of us has a day .. when he has to accept, finally, the fact that he is a man. — Jean Anouilh

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

Death is beautiful. It alone gives love its true habitat. — Jean Anouilh

However tight I shut my eyes, there will always be a stray dog somewhere in the world who'll stop me being happy. — Jean Anouilh

All prisons are brimming over with innocence. It is those who cram their fellows into them, in the name of empty ideas, who are the only guilty ones. — Jean Anouilh

I like reality. It tastes like bread. — Jean Anouilh

Nobody has a more sacred obligation to obey the law than those who make the law. — 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

Life consists of nothing more than the happiness we can get out of it. — Jean Anouilh

Il y aura toujours un chien perdu quelque part qui m'empe" chera d'e" tre heureux. There will always be a lost dog somewhere that will prevent me being happy. — Jean Anouilh

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

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

Talent is a faucet. When it is on, one must write. Inspiration is a farce that poets have invented to give themselves importance. — Jean Anouilh

All children are sweet at five. But at twelve they begin to get silly. — Jean Anouilh

Chacun de nous a un jour, plus ou moins triste, plus ou moins lointain, o u' il doit enfin accepter d'e tre un homme. There will come a day for each of us, more or less sad, more or less distant, whenwe must accept the condition of being human. — Jean Anouilh

Beauty, real beauty, is something very grave. If there is a God, He must be partly that. — Jean Anouilh

Saintliness is also a temptation. — Jean Anouilh

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. — Jean Anouilh

I spit on your happiness! I spit on your idea of life
that life that must go on, come what may. You are all like dogs that lick everything they smell. You with your promise of a humdrum happiness
provided a person doesn't ask much of life. I want everything of life, I do; and I want it now! I want it total, complete: otherwise I reject it! I will not be moderate. I will not be satisfied with the bit of cake you offer me if I promise to be a good little girl. I want to be sure of everything this very day; sure that everything will be as beautiful as when I was a little girl. If not, I want to die! — Jean Anouilh

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

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

Everything ends this way in France - everything. Weddings, christenings, duels, burials, swindlings, diplomatic affairs - everything is a pretext for a good dinner. — Jean Anouilh

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. — Jean Anouilh

It bothered me that whatever was waiting wasn't waiting for me — Jean Anouilh

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

My wife was an opera singer, you know. She bellowed her way through Wagner as a Valkyrie. I married her and made her give up the theatre, to my eternal cost. She was to go on acting for myself alone. A performance at his own expense, lasting for more than twenty years, tends to wear out your spectator. — Jean Anouilh

What you get free costs too much. — Jean Anouilh

You disgust me, all of you, with your happiness! With your life that must be loved at all costs. [ ... ] I spit on your idea of life! [ ... ] You are all like dogs that lick everything they smell! [ ... ] I do not want to understand. I am here for something other than understanding. I am here to tell you no, and to die. To tell you no and to die. — 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

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

A happy love is full of quarrels, you know. — Jean Anouilh

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

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

The spring is wound up tight. It will uncoil of itself. That is what is so convenient in tragedy. The least little turn of the wrist will do the job . . . The rest is automatic. You don't need to lift a finger. The machine is in perfect order; it has been oiled ever since time began, and it runs without friction . . . Tragedy is clean, it is restful, it is flawless . . . In a tragedy, nothing is in doubt and everyone's destiny is known. That makes for tranquility . . . Tragedy is restful; and the reason is that hope, that foul, deceitful thing, has no part in it. There isn't any hope. You're trapped. — Jean Anouilh

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

The object of art is to give life shape. — Jean Anouilh

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. — Jean Anouilh

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

We have found other terms far less vague than the old ones to designate the same complaints. It's a great advance linguistically. — 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

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

God! Is there anything uglier than a frightened man! — Jean Anouilh

Nothing is irreparable in politics. — Jean Anouilh

Every man thinks god is on his side. — Jean Anouilh

Life isn't what you think it is. It's like water, and the young let it trickle away between their fingers without even noticing. Cup your hands, keep it safe. Life eventually becomes something else, something hard, something simple, something you can hold in your hand and nibble on contentedly as you sit in the sun. — 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

Rien n'est vrai que ce qu'on ne dit pas. Nothing is true except that which is unsaid. — Jean Anouilh

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. — Jean Anouilh

I don't want people to love me. It makes for obligations. — Jean Anouilh

Obligations, hatreds, injuries; what did I expect my memories to be? I was forgetting remorse. Now I have a complete past. — Jean Anouilh

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

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 — Jean Anouilh

Tragedy is clean, it is restful, it is flawless. — Jean Anouilh

What is this mania to love someone all one's life ? Why should we? — Jean Anouilh

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

Beauty is one of the rare things that do not lead to doubt of God. — Jean Anouilh

The true masters of the art of living are already happy ... — Jean Anouilh

Things are beautiful if you love them. — Jean Anouilh

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

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

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. — Jean Anouilh