Sidonie Gabrielle Colette Quotes - Page 2

It takes time for the absent to assume their true shape in our thoughts.

I want nothing from love, in short, but love.

The lovesick, the betrayed, and the jealous all smell alike.

Perhaps the only misplaced curiosity is that which persists in trying to find out here, on this side of death, what lies beyond the grave.

By means of an image we are often able to hold on to our lost belongings. But it is the desperateness of losing which picks the flowers of memory, binds the bouquet.

One keeps forgetting old age up to the very brink of the grave.

Among all the modernized aspects of the most luxurious of industries, the model, a vestige of voluptuous barbarianism, is like some plunder-laden prey. She is the object of unbridled regard, a living bait, the passive realization of an ideal. No other female occupation contains such potent impulses to moral disintegration as this one, applying as it does the outward signs of riches to a poor and beautiful girl.

I believe there are more urgent and honorable occupations than the incomparable waste of time we call suffering.

When she raises her eyelids it's as if she were taking off all her clothes.

The faults of husbands are often caused by the excess virtues of their wives.

A few days later, I found my mother beneath the tree, motionless with excitement, her head turned toward the heavens in which she would allow human religions no place.

On this narrow planet, we have only the choice between two unknown worlds. One of them tempts us - ah! what a dream, to live in that! - the other stifles us at the first breath.

I am indebted to the cat for a particular kind of honorable deceit, for a greater control over myself, for a characteristic aversion to brutal sounds, and for the need to keep silent for long periods of time.

If he's getting married, he's not longer interesting.

I have found my voice again and the art of using it.

- and how time flies! What, has it already been twenty years, already forty years that we are together? Why, how terrible! We haven't yet said all we wanted to say to each other... May we have a little respite, or else may we be allowed to begin all over again!

My true friends have always given me that supreme proof of devotion, a spontaneous aversion for the man I loved.

There is no need to waste pity on young girls who are having their moments of disillusionment, for in another moment they will recover their illusion.

But what is the heart, madame? It's worth less than people think. it's quite accommodating, it accepts anything. You give it whatever you have, it's not very particular. But the body... Ha! That's something else again! It has a cultivated taste, as they say, it knows what it wants. A heart doesn't choose, and one always ends up by loving.

Writing only leads to more writing.

So now, whenever I despair, I no longer expect my end, but some bit of luck, some commonplace little miracle which, like a glittering link, will mend again the necklace of my days.

On the first of May, with my comrades of the catechism class, I laid lilac, chamomile and rose before the altar of the Virgin, and returned full of pride to show my blessed posy. My mother laughed her irreverent laugh and, looking at my bunch of flowers, which was bringing the may-bug into the sitting-room right under the lamp, she said: Do you suppose it wasn't already blessed before?

We only do well the things we like doing.

A kindly gesture bestowed by us on an animal arouses prodigies of understanding and gratitude.

Total absence of humor renders life impossible.