Faire Quotes
More Faire Quotes
La parole humaine est comme un chaudron fe" le o u' nous battons des me lodies a' faire danser les ours, quand on voudrait attendrir les e toiles. Human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we beat out tunes for bears to dance to, when all the time we are longing to move the stars to pity.
Gustave Flaubert— 1857 Madame Bovary, pt.1, ch.12.
Les enfants sont hautains, de daigneux, cole' res, envieux, curieux, inte resse s, paresseux, volages, timides, intempe rants, menteurs, dissimule s?ils ne veulent point souffrir de mal, et aiment a' en faire: ils sont de j a' des hommes. Children are haughty, disdainful, angry, envious, curious, interested, lazy, fickle, shy, self-indulgent, liars, deceivers?they do not wish to suffer evil, but like to do evil: theyare already adults.
— 1688 Les Caracte' res ou les m½urs de ce sie' cle,'De l'homme', no.50.
Ils commencent ici par faire pendre un homme, et puis ils lui font son proce' s. Here they hang a men first, and try him afterwards.
Jean Baptiste Poquelin Molière— 1669 In Paris. Monsieur de Pourceaugnac, act 3, sc.2.
[I am against] the Treaty of Rome which entrenches laissez faire as its philosophy and chooses bureaucracy as its administrative method.
tony benn— Encounter (January 1963)
Men do not sufficiently realise that their future is in their own hands. Theirs is the task of determining first of all whether they want to go on living or not. Theirs the responsibility, then, for deciding if they want merely to live, or intend to make just the extra effort required for fulfilling, even on their refractory planet, the essential function of the universe, which is a machine for the making of gods (la fonction essentielle de l'universe, qui est une machine à faire des dieux).
henri-louis bergson— The Two Sources of Morality and Religion (1932), concluding sentences. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2002, p. 317.
— Often just the last part of the last sentence is quoted, in the form: "The universe is a machine for making gods."
Le pénible fardeau de n'avoir rien à faire.
nicholas boileau-despréaux— The terrible burden of having nothing to do.
— Epistle 11.
Je suis un homme de cause, je ne suis pas un individualiste et je pense en mon âme et conscience que je ne pourrais pas servir la société comme je voudrais le faire avec ce niveau d'appui.
bernard landry— In Radio-Canada, "Biographies: Bernard Landry" [2], retrieved August 28, 2005
— Translation: "I am a man of causes; I am not an individualist, and in my heart and conscience I do not think I could serve society as I would like to with this level of support."
— Note: quote from Landry's resignation speech, made after winning a party confidence vote by only 76.2%.
If one rejects laissez faire on account of man's fallibility and moral weakness, one must for the same reason also reject every kind of government action.
ludwig von mises— Planning for Freedom (1952), p. 44
Je fais toujours bien le premier vers: mais j'ai peine à faire les autres.
molière— I always make the first verse well, but I have trouble making the others.Les Précieuses Ridicules (1659), Act I, sc. xi.
Que diable allait-il faire dans cette galère?
molière— What the devil was he doing in that galley?Les Fourberies de Scapin (1671), Act II, sc. vi.
The orthodox doctrines of economics which were dominant in the last quarter of the nineteenth century had a clear message. They supported laisser faire, free trade, the gold standard, and the universally advantageous effects of the pursuit of profit by competitive private enterprise.
joan robinson— Introduction, p. vii
Mill sought to strengthen his defence of trade unions not by denying their possible monopoly effects, but by an appeal to the principle of laisser faire itself. To prevent the formation of corporate unions was, he thought, to interfere with a right obviously included in the general rule of freedom of contract.
roll, eric, baron roll of ipsden— Chapter VII, The Transition, p. 357
Les vieilles filles n'ayant pas fait plier leur caractère et leur vie à une autre vie ni à d'autres caractères, comme l'exige la destinée de la femme, ont, pour la plupart, la manie de vouloir tout faire plier autour d'elles.
honoré de balzac— Old maids who have never yielded in their habits of life or in their characters to other lives and other characters, as the fate of woman exacts, have, as a general thing, a mania for making others give way to them.Ch. I
L’amour est le plus joli larcin que la Société ait su faire à la Nature; mais la maternité, n’est-ce pas la Nature dans sa joie? Un sourire a séché mes larmes.
honoré de balzac— Love may be the fairest gem which Society has filched from Nature; but what is motherhood save Nature in her most gladsome mood? A smile has dried my tears.Part I, ch. XXVIII
L’épicier est entraîné vers son commerce par une force attractive égale à la force de répulsion qui en éloigne les artistes.On n’a pas assez étudié les forces sociales qui constituent les diverses vocations. Il serait curieux de savoir ce qui détermine un homme à se faire papetier plutôt que boulanger, du moment où les fils ne succèdent pas forcément au métier de leur père comme chez les Egyptiens.
honoré de balzac— A grocer is drawn to his business by an attracting force quite equal to the repelling force which drives artists away from it. We do not sufficiently study the social potentialities which make up the various vocations of life. It would be interesting to know what determines one man to be a stationer rather than a baker; since, in our day, sons are not compelled to follow the calling of their fathers, as they were among the Egyptians.Ch. I
On n'est jamais excusable d'être méchant, mais il y a quelque mérite à savoir qu'on l'est; et le plus irréparable des vices est de faire le mal par bêtise.
Charles Baudelaire— To be wicked is never excusable, but there is some merit in knowing that you are; the most irreparable of vices is to do evil from stupidity.XXVIII: "La Fausse Monnaie"
Je voulus faire un jet d’eau dans mon jardin; Euler calcula l’effort des roues pour faire monter l’eau dans un bassin, d’où elle devait retomber par des canaux, afin de jaillir à Sans-Souci. Mon moulin a été exécuté géométriquement, et il n’a pu élever une goutte d’eau à cinquante pas du bassin. Vanité des vanités! vanité de la géométrie!
Frederick II of Prussia— I wanted to have a water jet in my garden: Euler calculated the force of the wheels necessary to raise the water to a reservoir, from where it should fall back through channels, finally spurting out in Sans Souci. My mill was carried out geometrically and could not raise a mouthful of water closer than fifty paces from the reservoir. Vanity of vanities! Vanity of geometry!Letter H 7434 from Frederick to Voltaire (1778-01-25)
Évidemment, les critiques n'ont été créés que le septième jour. S'ils avaient été créés le premier, qu'auraient-ils eu à faire?
goncourt brothers— Critics must have been created on the seventh day. Because if God had created them on the first day, what on earth would they have done?March 8, 1863; translation from Robert Baldick Dinner at Magny's (London: Victor Gollancz, 1971) p. 77.
There is nothing in the basic principles of liberalism to make it a stationary creed; there are no hard-and-fast rules fixed once and for all. ... Probably nothing has done so much harm to the liberal cause as the wooden insistence of some liberals on certain rules of thumb, above all the principle of laissez faire.
friedrich hayek— The Road to Serfdom (1944)Reprinted in The Road to Serfdom: Text and Documents (University Chicago Press, 2007, ISBN 0-226-32055-3), p. 71
Dans notre état, il faut opter; il s'agit de faire fortune dans ce monde ou dans l'autre, il n'y a pas de milieu.
stendhal— In our calling, we have to choose; we must make our fortune either in this world or in the next, there is no middle way.Vol. I, ch. VIII
A la Scala, il est d'usage de ne faire durer qu'une vingtaine de minutes ces petites visites que l'on fait dans les loges.
stendhal— At La Scala it is customary to take no more than twenty minutes for those little visits one pays to boxes.Ch. 6
Les anciens Romains élevaient des prodiges d'architecture pour faire combattre des bêtes.
voltaire— The ancient Romans built their greatest masterpieces of architecture for wild beasts to fight in.Letter addressed to "un premier commis" [name unknown] (20 June 1733), from Oeuvres Complètes de Voltaire: Correspondance [Garnier frères, Paris, 1880], vol. I, letter # 343 (p. 354).
Most of those who say so easily that this is our way out do not, I am convinced, understand that fundamental changes of attitude, new disciplines, revised legal structures, unaccustomed limitations on activity, are all necessary if we are to plan. This amounts, in fact, to the abandonment, finally, of laissez faire. It amounts, practically, to the abolition of "business".
— Rexford Guy Tugwell, "The Principle of Planning and the Institution of Laissez Faire", paper presented at the 44th annual meeting of the American Economic Association; reported in The American Economic Review (March 1932), vol. 22, no. 1, supplement, p. 76.
[L]'universe […] est une machine à faire des dieux.
— Henri Bergson, The Two Sources of Morality and Religion (1932). Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2002, p. 317.
Je n'ai fait celle-ci plus longue que parce que je n'ai pas eu le loisir de la faire plus courte.
Blaise Pascal— Literally: I made this [letter] very long, because I did not have the leisure to make it shorter.
— Translation: I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time.
— Blaise Pascal, Provincial Letters: Letter XVI, 1657 (English Translation). Often misattributed to Mark Twain, as well as T.S. Eliot, Cicero, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and others.
Faint heart hath been a common phrase, faire ladie never wives.
— J. P. Collier's Reprint of The Rocke of Regard (1576), p. 122.
First the high palme-trees, with braunches faire, Out of the lowly vallies did arise, And high shoote up their heads into the skyes.
Edmund Spenser— Edmund Spenser, Virgil's Gnat, line 191.
Qu'on me donne six lignes écrites de la main du plus honnête homme, j'y trouverai de quoi le faire pendre.
— If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him.
— Attributed to Richelieu by Fournier, L'Esprit dans l'Histoire (1883), Chapter XLI, p. 255.
Car en mon cuer porte couvertement Le dueil qui soit qui plus me puet desplaire, Et si me fault, pour les gens faire taire, Rire en plorant et très amerement De triste cuer chanter joyeusement.
— For what would I be otherwise but sport,
In love with one who does not care for me?
I will hide pain in smiles, sooner than be
The common talk. It is a bitter art
To sing a happy song with a sad heart.
— Rondeau "De triste cuer chanter joyeusement", line 8; Maurice Roy (ed.) Œuvres Poétiques de Christine de Pisan (1886) vol. 1, p. 154, as translated by by Sheenagh Pugh.
