non-fiction-authors-from-france

"The standing armies, while a burden on the people, are inadequate for the achievement of great and decisive results in war, and meanwhile the mass of the people, untrained in arms, degenerates....The hegemony over Europe will fall to that nation which...becomes possessed of manly virtues and creates a national army."

"Les hommes font les lois. Les femmes font les mœurs."

"Le désir de s'enrichir est leur passion dominante, et à vrai dire leur seule passion."

"Science does not aim to cover exhaustively the whole of reality, but to construct systems and concepts which will perhaps — and it is a big perhaps — allow man to act on the world."

"Although Champollion was an avowed revolutionary and an enthusiastic Bonapartist, one of his earliest discoveries discredited some of the theories of Dupuis’s supporters, and he and his decipherment were therefore welcomed by the Church and the Restoration nobility. On the other hand, his championing of Egypt over Greece combined with his political beliefs to infuriate Hellenist and Indianist scholars, who continued to do all they could to block his academic career."

"[T]he counselor entered secretly into the Queen's chamber and there hid himself behind the arras, not long before the Queen and Hamlet came thither, who, being crafty and politic, as soon as he was within the chamber, doubting some treason, and fearing if he should speak severely and wisely to his mother touching his secret practices he should be understood and by that means intercepted, used his ordinary manner of dissimulation, and began to crow like a cock, beating with his arms in such manner as cocks use to strike with their wings, upon the hangings of the chamber; whereby, feeling something stirring under them, he cried, "A rat, a rat," and presently drawing his sword thrust it into the hangings, which done, pulled the counselor half dead out by the heels, made an end of killing him, and, being slain, cut his body in pieces, which he caused to be boiled and then cast it into an open vault or privy, that so it might serve for food to the hogs."

"I beseech you that shall read this history not to resemble the spider, that feedeth of the corruption that she findith in the flowers and fruits that are in the gardens, whereas the bee gathereth her honey out of the best and fairest flower she can find. For a man that is well brought up should read the lives of whoremongers, drunkards, incestuous, violent, and bloody persons, not to follow their steps and so to defile himself with such uncleanness, but to shun palliardise, abstain the superfluities and drunkenness in banquets, and follow the modesty, courtesy, and continency that recommendeth Hamlet in this discourse, who, while other made good cheer, continued sober; and where all men sought as much as they could to gather together riches and treasure, he, simply accounting riches nothing comparable to honor, sought to gather a multitude of virtues, that might make him equal to those that by them were esteemed as gods; having not as then received the light of the Gospel, that men might see among the barbarians, and them that were far from the knowledge of one only God, that nature was provoked to follow that which is good, and those forward to embrace virtue, for that there was never any nation, how rude or barbarous soever, that took not some pleasure to do that which seemed good, thereby to win praise and commendations, which we have said to be the reward of virtue and good life. I delight to speak of these strange histories, and of people that were unchristened, that the virtue of the rude people may give more splendor to our nation, who, seeing them so complete, wise, prudent, and well advised in their actions, might strive not only to follow (imitation being a small matter), but to surmount them, as our religion surpasseth their superstition, and our age more purged, subtle, and gallant, than the season wherein they lived and made their virtues known."

"[T]he desire of bearing sovereign rule and authority respecteth neither blood nor amity, nor caring for virtue, as being wholly without respect of laws, or majesty divine; for it is not possible that he which invadeth the country and taketh away the riches of another man without cause or reason should know or fear God."

"As touching magical operations, I will grant them somewhat therein, finding divers histories that write thereof, and that the Bible maketh mention, and forbiddeth the use thereof: yea, the laws of the gentiles and ordinances of emperors have been made against it in such sort, that Mahomet, the great heretic and friend of the devil, by whose subtleties he abused most part of the east countries, hath ordained great punishments for such as use and practice those unlawful and damnable arts."

"I mean not to relate that which divers men believe, that a reasonable soul becometh the habitation of a meaner sort of devils, by whom men learn the secrets of things natural; and much less do I account of the supposed governors of the world feigned by magicians, by whose means they brag to effect marvelous things."

"[T]he nature of all young men, especially such as are brought up wantonly, is so transported with the desires of the flesh, and entereth so greedily into the pleasures thereof, that it is almost impossible to cover the foul affection, neither yet to dissemble or hide the same by art or industry, much less to shun it. What cunning or subtlety soever they use to cloak their pretense, seeing occasion offered, and that in secret, especially in the most enticing sin that reigneth in man, they cannot choose (being constrained by voluptuousness) but fall to natural effect and working."

"[T]he diversities of opinions among that multitude of people being many, yet every man ignorant what would be the issue of that tragedy, none stirred from thence, neither yet attempted to move any tumult, every man fearing his own skin, and, distrusting his neighbor, esteeming each other to be consenting to the massacre."

"If vengeance ever seemed to have any show of justice, it is then when piety and affection constraineth us to remember our fathers unjustly murdered, as the things whereby we are dispensed withal, and which seek the means not to leave treason and murder unpunished; seeing David, a holy and just king, and of nature simple, courteous, and debonair, yet when he died he charged his son Solomon (that succeeded him in his throne) not to suffer certain men that had done him injury to escape unpunished. Not that this holy king (as then ready to die, and to give account before God of all his actions) was careful or desirous of revenge, but to leave this example unto us, that where the prince or country is interested, the desire of revenge cannot by any means (how small soever) bear the title of condemnation, but is rather commendable and worthy of praise; for otherwise the good Kings of Judah, nor others had not pursued them to death, that had offended their predecessors, if God himself had not inspired and engraven that desire within their hearts. Hereof the Athenian laws bear witness, whose custom was to erect images in remembrance of those men that, revenging the injuries of the commonwealth, boldly massacred tyrants and such as troubled the peace and welfare of the citizens."

"Is this the part of a queen and daughter to a king? To live like a brute beast and like a mare that yieldeth her body to the horse that hath beaten her companion away, to follow the pleasure of an abominable king that hath murdered a far more honester and better man than himself in massacring Horvendile, the honor and glory of the Danes, who are now esteemed of no force nor valor at all, since the shining splendor of knighthood was brought to an end by the most wickedest and cruellest villain living upon earth? [...] O Queen Geruthe, it is the part of a bitch to couple with many and desire acquaintance of divers mastiffs; it is licentiousness only that hath made you deface out of your mind the memory of the valor and virtues of the good king your husband and my father. [...] It is not the part of a woman, much less of a princess, in whom all modesty, courtesy, compassion, and love ought to abound, thus to leave her dear child to fortune in the bloody and murderous hands of a villain and traitor. Brute beasts do not so, for lions, tigers, ounces, and leopards fight for the safety and defense of their whelps; and birds that have beaks, claws, and wings resist such as would ravish them of their young ones."

"Who was ever sorrowful to behold the murderer of innocents brought to his end, or what man weepeth to see a just massacre done upon a tyrant, usurper, villain, and bloody personage?"

"[W]here shall a man find a more wicked and bold woman than a great personage once having loosed the bands of honor and honesty? [...] But I will not stand to gaze and marvel at women, for that there are many which seek to blaze and set them forth, in which their writings they spare not to blame them all for the faults of some one or few women. But I say that either nature ought to have bereaved man of that opinion to accompany with women, or else to endow them with such spirits as that they may easily support the crosses they endure, without complaining so often and so strangely, seeing it is their own beastliness that overthrows them. For if it be so that a woman is so imperfect a creature as they make her to be, and that they know this beast to be so hard to be tamed as they affirm, why then are they so foolish to preserve them, and so dull and brutish as to trust their deceitful and wanton embracings?"

"Hamlet, in this sort counterfeiting the madman, many times did divers actions of great and deep consideration, and often made such and so fit answers that a wise man would soon have judged from what spirit so fine an invention might procced, for that standing by the fire and sharpening sticks like poniards and pricks, one in smiling manner asked him wherefore he made those little staves so sharp at the points? "I prepare," saith he, "piercing darts and sharp arrows to revenge my father's death.""

"It toucheth not the matter herein to discover the parts of divination in man, and whether this Prince, by reason of his over-great melancholy, had received those impressions, divining that which never any but himself had before declared, like the philosophers who, discoursing of divers deep points of philosophy, attribute the force of those divinations to such as are Saturnists by complexion, who oftentimes speak of things which, their fury ceasing, they then already can hardly understand who are the pronouncers."

"For the clergy he was a severe disciplinarian, but was himself foremost with the example of a holy life."

"One cannot understand the sinner through sin, because sin is not a positive technique: in its essence it is deprivation, absence, nothingness; it is sin to the exact extent that it decapitates the good of the act performed. It is therefore not a factor of understanding but of obscurity."

"The prayer of Bernadette is contagious."

"If heaven chooses what does not exist according to the world, it is not for the gratuitous pleasure of mocking the world."

"One is capable of mercy to the extent that one knows one is the object of mercy."

"There is no true love for the sinner without hatred for his sin."

"The Virgin [Mary] is the one in whom no sin has diminished love."

"Mass and the Body of Christ have become the very center of pilgrimage to Lourdes."

"Lourdes does not disappoint, even though miracles remain the exception there."

"It cannot be said that Mary's Redemption is of a different kind from ours, because it is the same redemption as Christ's, but in its supreme fulfillment and with its own modes of anticipation and perfection."

"If she is our queen, we too will reign with Christ; Mary is not superior to us except in being closer to us."

"Thérèse of Lisieux was one of the sources of inspiration for the philosopher Henri Bergson during the final stage of his search, in which he found God thanks to the testimony of mystics."

"Through the apparitions at Lourdes, Our Lady wanted to restore in us a love for the poor and for poverty, a love that is ingenious and liberating."

"We sinners oscillate dangerously between harshness and complicity towards others."

"Christ does not even grant her [to Mary] the satisfactions of motherhood according to the flesh, however legitimate they may be."

"Mary shared the obscure condition of faith that is that of the other redeemed."

"Conversion: this is the word that most specifically expresses the meaning of pilgrimage."

"The events at Lourdes present an order, a harmony that becomes increasingly apparent as one delves deeper."

"The mid-19th century saw the triumph of the reign of money over the medieval reign of honor and traditions."

"Revolutions are not effected of a sudden. Christianity accepts society as it is, influencing it for its transformation through, and only through, individual souls."

"On the one hand, then, in the reproductive functions proper—menstruation, defloration, pregnancy, and parturition—woman is biologically doomed to suffer. Nature seems to have no hesitation in administering to her strong doses of pain, and she can do nothing but submit passively to the regimen prescribed. On the other hand, as regards sexual attraction, which is necessary for the act of impregnation, and as regards the erotic pleasure experienced during the act itself, the woman may be on equal footing with the man."

"Poor health, which worsened with the passing of the years, forced him from his youth to withdraw into himself, to seek in his own spirit the best source of joy. Few penetrated his moral intimacy. But just seeing him like that, tall, pale, thin, emaciated, it was easy to guess what a rich inner life was enclosed in that frail body, and how the world of the spirit must have been the only real world for him."

"He used to say that a philosophical system is a living thought; and, in truth, he not only taught his philosophy, but lived it, felt it, spread it and defended it in books and with words, in Europe and America, regardless of hardship, with all the ardour of a missionary."

"For many years, the clergy of the parish of Saint-Etienne-du-Mont cherished the memory of that pale teenager, who never missed divine services and zealously fulfilled all religious practices. In turn, Boutroux never forgot the church of his first communion, the church where his spirit had been nourished and strengthened in those religious convictions that were to form the basis and crowning glory of his philosophical views. As an adult, he returned there more than once to recall the sweet memories of his younger years and to meditate at the tomb of Blaise Pascal."

"The main core around which Boutroux's thought revolves is the problem of science and the meaning of natural laws. From 1874, the year of his thesis, “De la Contingence des lois de la Nature”, until his death, i.e. for just under half a century, Boutroux developed and elaborated his critique of science, always insisting on it and basing his theories on freedom and religion on it, which form, one might say, the positive part of his philosophy. (Ugo Spirito, Il pragmatismo nella filosofia contemporanea, Vallecchi Editore, Firenze, 1921, cap. II, p. 142)"

"Scientific laws, says Boutroux, result from the collaboration of the spirit and things; they are the product of the activity of the spirit applied to a foreign matter; and they represent the effort that the spirit makes to establish a coincidence between things and itself. But what coincidence is this, where it is not known with what thought must coincide? He rightly says that the highest forms of reality cannot be resolved into the lowest; but then he resolves into the lowest... precisely thought, that is, the very thought that alone can make us understand progress from below to above. Consequently, progress is clouded in the void of contingency, and all forms of reality become things in themselves, which thought can do nothing but shadow in its concepts, trying in vain to adapt to them. (Guido De Ruggiero, La filosofia contemporanea, Editori Laterza, Bari, 19648, Part II, Ch. IV, p. 191)"

"In the continuous development of nature and spirit, Boutroux believes it is impossible to establish anything definitive that has eternal value. Man, therefore, who is the greatest exponent of progress, does not know what his progress is tending towards; he does not know, therefore, whether his progress is true progress. Everything disappears into the indeterminate, into confusion, and the sceptical conclusion presents itself as compelling. But no: Boutroux, like James before him, does not lose himself in negation at this point and wants to save himself from scepticism. And so negation itself is transformed into affirmation. It is precisely the indistinct, the confused that contains the reason for life: in it is love, faith, the ideal; in it is that powerful impulse that moves the poet, the artist, the scientist himself, for science would be nothing without faith. But religion thus attained is an empty religion, and the ideal thus established is an ideal that fades into nothingness. (Ugo Spirito, Il pragmatismo nella filosofia contemporanea, Vallecchi Editore, Firenze, 1921, cap. II pp. 150-151)"

"[...] the history of philosophy deals with the doctrines conceived by philosophers, not philosophy in general in its entirety, nor the psychological evolution of each thinker in particular; therefore, its essential task, to which all others are subordinate, consists in penetrating and understanding doctrines, explaining them as well as possible, as the author himself would do, and presenting them in accordance with the spirit and, to a certain extent, the style of their author. (Ch. I, pp. 7-8)"

"A philosopher is a man who compares the knowledge and beliefs of men in order to investigate their relationships; therefore, we want to know how Plato or Leibniz conceived these relationships; Furthermore, since a philosopher is not a seer to whom truth is revealed in a flash, but a patient researcher who reflects, criticises, doubts, hesitates, and surrenders only to obvious reasons, we want to know by what methodical means, by what observations and reasoning our author arrived at his conclusions. For this is not a matter of unconscious and mechanical work of his brain, but of a conscious and deliberate effort to overcome the limits of his own personality, to think universally, and to discover the truth. (Ch. I, p. 7)"

"Socrates' condemnation of ancient physics has its root cause in the ideas inherent in his own nation. Greece could not fully identify with the speculations on the principles of things to which the physiologists had gone. Without doubt, the power of reasoning, the ingenious subtlety, and the marvellous sense of harmony employed by these profound investigators were its heritage; but the immediate application of these spiritual qualities to material objects so foreign to man was contrary to the genius of an essentially political race, especially fond of fine words and fine deeds. (Ch. II, p. 22)"

"[...] the person of Ravaisson himself is like the act, the fulfilment of the thought which, in his written philosophy, aspires to realise itself. He immediately distinguished himself by a grace, a distinction, a smiling serenity that never disappeared. He attracted people with his good grace and impressed them with his fundamental affinity with the noble and the great. He spoke with absolute simplicity and probity, concerned only with thinking correctly and expressing his thoughts faithfully and naturally, without ever allowing a word of effect or rhetorical artifice to enter his mind. He spoke about everything and was interested in the small pleasures of the world as well as the great questions of philosophy and life. But in all things he saw the link between the ideal and the real. Like the ancient Greeks, he saw the divine in everything. (La filosofia di F. Ravaisson, pp. 115-116)"

"Above all, [Félix Ravaisson] was a writer. He expressed himself in broad, flexible, simple and wise phrases, elegant and solid with an air of abandon, and the logical relationships between ideas and the aesthetic harmony that coordinates them and the creative action that brings forth the details, conditions and elements from the whole and from the beginning. His style is the very soul grasped in his inner life and in the secret movement through which it gives itself and spreads. (La filosofia di F. Ravaisson, p. 116)"