Georges Duhamel Quotes and Sayings, Photo credit: Wikipedia
Excerpt from Wikipedia: Georges Duhamel (30 June 1884 – 13 April 1966) was a French author, born in Paris. Duhamel trained as a doctor, and during World War I was attached to the French Army. In 1920, he published Confession de minuit, the first of a series featuring the anti-hero Salavin. In 1935, he was elected as a member of the Académie française. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature twenty-seven times. He was also the father of the musicologist and composer Antoine Duhamel.
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Georges Duhamel Quotes and Sayings
#1 Preface, The Heart’s Domain, 1919, Author: Georges Duhamel, Translation: Eleanor Stimson Brooks [S]
1. The possession of the world is not decided by guns. It is the noble work of peace.
#2 The Shelter of Life, The Heart’s Domain, 1919, Author: Georges Duhamel, Translation: Eleanor Stimson Brooks [S]
2. We do not know the true value of our moments until they have undergone the test of memory.
#3 The Shelter of Life, The Heart’s Domain, 1919, Author: Georges Duhamel, Translation: Eleanor Stimson Brooks [S]
3. It is best, therefore, and with all the strength that is in us, to accept, honor, love this present as the principal source of our riches.
#4 APOSTLESHIP, The Heart’s Domain, 1919, Author: Georges Duhamel, Translation: Eleanor Stimson Brooks [S]
4. Keep a little book in your pocket that is carefully brought up to date. And do not trust your memory; it is a net full of holes; the most beautiful prizes slip through it.
#5 APOSTLESHIP, The Heart’s Domain, 1919, Author: Georges Duhamel, Translation: Eleanor Stimson Brooks [S]
5. We shall never be really happy until we have admitted and converted to our joy those whom we love; and we shall love them all the better for having brought them some joy, for being among the causes of their comfort.
#6 APOSTLESHIP, The Heart’s Domain, 1919, Author: Georges Duhamel, Translation: Eleanor Stimson Brooks [S]
6. Every day you discover a means of transforming into happiness the elements that others possess and neglect. Do not hesitate, therefore: show them the fruitful use they ought to make of their blessings.
#7 The Possession of Others, The Heart’s Domain, 1919, Author: Georges Duhamel, Translation: Eleanor Stimson Brooks [S]
7. Where the exercise of the intelligence seems to result in the fatal imprisonment of the soul within itself, love enables us to see how the soul can reach beyond its own limits into time and space.
#8 The Possession of Others, The Heart’s Domain, 1919, Author: Georges Duhamel, Translation: Eleanor Stimson Brooks [S]
8. There is but small merit in understanding those whom we love; there is a great, a crowningly bitter pleasure, in penetrating a soul that is hostile to us…
#9 The Hope of Happiness, The Heart’s Domain, 1919, Author: Georges Duhamel, Translation: Eleanor Stimson Brooks [S]
9. He who knows how to be happy and to win forgiveness for his happiness, how enviable he is!—the only true model among those that are wise.
#10 THE CHOICE OF THE GRACES, The Heart’s Domain, 1919, Author: Georges Duhamel, Translation: Eleanor Stimson Brooks [S]
10. I am willing to pass for a man who is eager for forgiveness, a man who is satisfied with little. We wish to set our own value on everything, as if the things of the spirit meant the same thing as money, as if they did not depend upon quite another spirit than that of the accountants and geometricians.
#11 On the Reign of the Heart, The Heart’s Domain, 1919, Author: Georges Duhamel, Translation: Eleanor Stimson Brooks [S]
11. My work is finished. It begins to withdraw from me. If it can bring any consolation to a single one of these suffering souls, let me believe that it has fulfilled its destiny.
#12-16 In Defence of Letters, Kennikat Press, 1968
12. I believe that if humanity were to lose its libraries, not only would it be deprived of certain treasures of art, certain spiritual riches, but, more important still, it would lose its recipes for living.
13. …in books may be found the recipes for manufacture of a steam-engine alongside the recipes for daily living—the prescriptions for the mind and the heart.
14. Books are the friends of solitude. They develop individuality and freedom. In solitary reading a man who is seeking himself has some chance of finding himself.
15. Use your radio, but know how to distrust it—and do not let a day go by without reading and meditation if you want to save your soul, that soul which is yours and yours alone.
16. But what a teacher imparts by word of mouth is nothing in comparison with what he teaches us to get for ourselves from books.
#17 Throughout the Land, The New Book of Martyrs, Translation: Florence Simmonds [S]
17. 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.