Best 18 quotes of Emile Chartier on MyQuotes

As opposed to the incoherent spectacle of the world, the real is what is expected, what is obtained and what is discovered by our own movement. It is what is sensed as being within our own power and always responsive to our action.

Every idea I get I have to deny, that's my way of testing it.

If religion is only human, and its form is man's form, it follows that everything in religion is true.

It is not difficult to be unhappy or discontented; all you have to do is sit down, like a prince waiting to be amused. ... It is impossible to be happy if one does not have the desire to be happy; one must therefore will one's happiness, and create it.

It is the human condition to question one god after another, one appearance after another, or better, one apparition after another, always pursuing the truth of the imagination, which is not the same as the truth of appearance.

Nothing is more dangerous than an idea when it is the only one you have.

One must be truthful with oneself about one's own motives, especially if one is to survive in the world. It takes rigor, and it takes courage.

People who are upset about something ruminate on it whenever they get a chance; they are constantly drawn back to their own unhappy tale as if it were a horror story left open on a table.

Profound sadness is always the result of an unhealthy condition of the body. ... We [should] say, 'I am sad; everything looks black to me; but external events are in no way responsible. It's my body that insists on reasoning. These are the opinions of my stomach.'

The most difficult thing in the world is to say thinkingly what everybody says without thinking.

There are only two kinds of scholars; those who love ideas and those who hate them.

To think is to say 'no.'

Two things are aesthetically perfect in the world - the clock and the cat.

We must recognize the eloquence of our passions and refuse to be taken in. Instead of saying, 'That false friend always did despise me,' say: 'In my present state of agitation, I can't see clearly, I can't judge clearly; I am only a tragic actor who is declaiming for his own ears.' Then you will see the lights in the theater go out for lack of an audience, and the brilliant sets will be nothing more than painted cardboard.

We prove what we want to prove, and the real difficulty is to know what we want to prove.

What is a thousand years? Time is short for one who thinks, endless for one who yearns.

When we speak, in gestures or signs, we fashion a real object in the world; the gesture is seen, the words and the song are heard. The arts are simply a kind of writing, which, in one way or another, fixes words or gestures, and gives body to the invisible.

Wouldn't a sailor laugh at you if you told him that the whole crossing depends on the first turn of the helm?