Ce sont les hommes qui n'aiment pas les femmes qui s'intéressent à la toilette des femmes. Et les hommes qui aiment les femmes ne voient pas seulement comment elles sont habillées." - Meaning and context.">
Only men who are not interested in women are interested in women's clothes. Men who like women see more than how they dress.
 • Histoire contemporaine: L'anneau d'améthyste (1899)
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Ce sont les hommes qui n'aiment pas les femmes qui s'intéressent à la toilette des femmes. Et les hommes qui aiment les femmes ne voient pas seulement comment elles sont habillées.

— Anatole France

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "Ce sont les hommes qui n'aiment pas les femmes qui s'intéressent à la toilette des femmes. Et les hommes qui aiment les femmes ne voient pas seulement comment elles sont habillées." in the context of "Only men who are not interested in women are interested in women's clothes. Men who like women see more than how they dress.
 • Histoire contemporaine: L'anneau d'améthyste (1899)" to mean that wisdom is timeless.

Source: Wikiquote: "Anatole France" (Quotes) The 'What it means' explanation text was generated by Google Gemini Flash (accessed January 18, 2026). https://gemini.google.com/app
Anatole France

About Anatole France

Anatole France (16 April 1844 – 12 October 1924), born Jacques Anatole François Thibault, was a French poet, journalist, and novelist. Ironic and skeptical, he was considered in his day the ideal French man of letters. A member of the Académie française, he won the 1921 Nobel Prize in Literature in recognition of his literary achievements. He is widely believed to be the model for the narrator's literary idol "Bergotte" in Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time.