Georges Duhamel Quotations

It is always brave to say what everyone thinks.

Do not trust your memory; it is a net full of holes; the most beautiful prizes slip through it.

We do not know the true value of our moments until they have undergone the test of memory. Like the images the photographer plunges into a golden bath, our sentiments take on color; and only then, after that recoil and that trans-figuration, do we understand their real meaning and enjoy them in all their tranquil splendor.

Let us lose none of their humble words, let us note their slightest gestures, and tell me, tell me that we will think of them together, now and later, when we realise the misery of the times and the magnitude of their sacrifice.

The swimmer adrift on the open seas measures his strength, and strives with all his muscles to keep himself afloat. But what is he to do when there is no land on the horizon, and none beyond it?

I have too much respect for the idea of God to make it responsible for such an absurd world.

Suffering has roused them from the sleep of gentle life, and every day fills them with a terrible intoxication. They are now something more than themselves; those we loved were merely happy shadows.

In the beds which the piety of the public has prepared on every side, stricken men await the verdict of fate.

We can know nothing till after this grave debate. The soul must withdraw, for this is not its hour. Now the knife must divide the flesh, and lay the ravage bare, and do its work completely.

There is no French town in which the wounds inflicted on the battle-field are not bleeding.

To drink is a small matter. To be thirsty is everything.

The man who has entered into a beautiful union is sure of at least one person to whom he can give the best that he possesses.

The desire for order is the only order in the world.

It is strange what a contempt men have for the joys that are offered them freely.

No doubt about it: error is the rule, truth is the accident of error.

You conquered the landscape with the soles of shoes, not the tires.

Courtesy is not dead - it has merely taken refuge in Great Britain.

When you are in it up to your ears, keep your mouth shut.

A library is that venerable place where men preserve the history of their experience, their tentative experiments, their discoveries, and their plans... in books may be found the recipes for daily living - the prescriptions for the mind and the heart.

I can no longer think what I want to think. My thoughts have been replaced by moving images.