Tao Te Ching

The Power of Goodness, the Wisdom Beyond Words
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Anatole France

(Jacques Anatole Thibault)

1844 – 1924 CE

Son of a bookseller and true bibliophile, librarian for the French Senate, and modern lineage holder of Epicurean thought; Anatole France was venomously attacked by Nazi collaborators but defended and admired by George Orwell. His entire set of writings were banned and prohibited by the Roman Catholic Church but in 1921 awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature "in recognition of his brilliant literary achievements, characterized as they are by a nobility of style, a profound human sympathy, and grace.” Journalist, poet, social commentator, historian, playwright, and famous novelist; he became the model for a narrator in Proust's In Search of Lost Time.

Eras

Sources

The Garden of Epicurus

Unlisted Sources

The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard, 1881

Quotes by Anatole France (14 quotes)

“An education isn’t how much you know… It’s being able to differentiate between what you know and what you don’t.”

Chapters: 18. The Sick Society

Themes: Education

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“If a million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing.”

Chapters: 38. Fruit Over Flowers

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“The poor have to labor in the face of the majestic equality of the law, which forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to be in the streets, and to steal bread.”

Chapters: 75. Greed

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“We must die to one life before we can enter another.”

Chapters: 24. Unnecessary Baggage

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“To imagine is everything, to know is nothing at all.”

Chapters: 37. Nameless Simplicity

Themes: Imagination

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

Chapters: 47. Effortless Success

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“Nine tenths of education is encouragement.”

Chapters: 67. Three Treasures

Themes: Education

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“Suffering — how divine it is, how misunderstood! We owe to it all that is good in us, all that gives value to life; we owe to it pity, we owe to it courage, we owe to it all the virtues.”

from The Garden of Epicurus

Chapters: 78. Water

Themes: Virtue

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“It is possible that our millions of suns make up altogether but a spec in a minute insect in a world vast beyond our ability to imagine which is in some other world no more than a speck of dust.”

from The Garden of Epicurus

Chapters: 1. The Unnamed

Themes: True Self Reality

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“If we knew everything, we could not endure existence a single hour.”

from The Garden of Epicurus

Chapters: 48. Unlearning

Themes: Suffering

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“Until one has loved an animal a part of one's soul remains unawakened.”

Themes: Love

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“The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself a fool.”

Chapters: 65. Simplicity: the Hidden Power of Goodness

Themes: Wisdom Humility

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“The greatest virtue of man is perhaps curiosity.”

Themes: Curiosity

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“Time deals gently only with those who take it gently.”

from The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard, 1881

Themes: Time Kindness

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