Literary Birthday – 29 January – Romain Rolland

Romain Rolland was born 29 January 1866 and died 30 December 1944.

10 Quotes

1. No one ever reads a book. He reads himself through books.
2. Discussion is impossible with someone who claims not to seek the truth, but already to possess it.
3. You want to be a hero. That is why you do such silly things.
4. Every man who is truly a man must learn to be alone in the midst of all others, and if need be against all others.
5. A hero is a man who does what he can.
6. The greatest book is not the one whose message engraves itself on the brain, as a telegraphic message engraves itself on the ticker-tape, but the one whose vital impact opens up other viewpoints, and from writer to reader spreads the fire that is fed by the various essences, until it becomes a vast conflagration leaping from forest to forest.
7. To understand everything is to hate nothing.
8. One makes mistakes; that is life. But it is never a mistake to have loved.
9. Every man, every art, has its hypocrisy. The world is fed with little and many lies.
10. There are some dead who are more alive than the living.

Romain Rolland was a French dramatist, novelist, essayist, art historian and mystic. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1915. He is the author of Pierre and Luce.

by Amanda Patterson

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