Jean Anouilh - biography

“A good actor must never be in love with anyone but himself.”

“Life is very nice, but it lacks form.  It’s the aim of art to give it some.”

“Beauty is one of the rare things which does not lead to doubt of God.”

“It takes a certain courage and a certain greatness to be truly base.”

“Men create real miracles when they use their God-given courage and intelligence.”

“Have you noticed that life, with murders and catastrophes and fabulous inheritances, happens almost exclusively in newspapers?”

“We poison our lives with fear of burglary and shipwreck, and, ask anyone, the house is never burgled, and the ship never goes down.”

“To say yes, you have to sweat and roll up your sleeves and plunge both hands into life up to the elbows.  It is easy to say no, even if saying no means death.”

“Until the day of his death, no man can be sure of his courage.”

“There is love of course.  And then there’s life, its enemy.”

“All evil comes from the old.They grow fat on ideas and young men die of them.”

“With God, what is terrible is that one never knows whether it’s not just a trick of the devil.”

“Some men like to make a little garden out of life and walk down a path.”

“A genius knows how to make himself easily understood without being obvious about it.”

“Are you in earnest?  Seize this very minute!  Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it.  Only engage, and then the mind grows heated.  Begin, and then the work will be completed.”

“Every man thinks god is on his side.”

“Tragedy is restful: and the reason is that hope, that foul, deceitful thing, has no part in it.”

“Life has a way of setting things in order and leaving them be.  Very tidy, is life.”

“Life is a wonderful thing to talk about, or to read about in history books - but it is terrible when one has to live it.”

“Our entire life - consists ultimately in accepting ourselves as we are.”

“Love is, above all, the gift of oneself.”

“Oh, love is real enough; you will find it someday, but it has one archenemy - and that is life.”

“Things are beautiful if you love them.”

“Nothing is irreparable in politics.”

“Talent is like a faucet, while it is open, one must write.”

“God is on everyone’s side...  and in the last analysis, he is on the side with plenty of money and large armies.”

“An ugly sight, a man who is afraid.”

“I like reality.  It tastes like bread.”

“Inspiration is a farce that poets have invented to give themselves importance.”

“One cannot weep for the entire world, it is beyond human strength.  One must choose.”

“Propaganda is a soft weapon; hold it in your hands too long, and it will move about like a snake, and strike the other way.”

“The only immorality is not to do what one has to do when one has to do it.”

“What fun it would be to be poor, as long as one was excessively poor!  Anything in excess is most exhilarating.”

“What you get free costs too much.”

“When you are forty, half of you belongs to the past...  And when you are seventy, nearly all of you.”

Jean Anouilh contributed to the screenplay for the following films:
La Citadelle du silence (1937)
Les Dégourdis de la 11ème (1937)
Vous n’avez rien à déclarer? (1937)
Les Otages (1938)
Cavalcade d’amour (1940)
Marie-Martine (1943)
Le Voyageur sans bagages (1944)
La Fiancée des ténèbres (1945)
Monsieur Vincent (1947)
Anna Karenina (1948)
Pattes blanches (1949)
Caroline chérie (1951)
Deux sous de violettes (1951)
Le Rideau rouge (1952)
Un caprice de Caroline chérie (1953)
Le Chevalier de la nuit (1954)
La Mort de Belle (1961)
Waltz of the Toreadors (1962)
Becket (1964)
La Ronde (1964)
Piège pour Cendrillon (1965)
I Was Happy Here (1966)
A Time for Loving (1971)


Jean Anouilh directed the following films:
Le Voyageur sans bagages (1944)
Deux sous de violettes (1951)