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Colette QUOTES

Colette QUOTES

1 " It's so curious: one can resist tears and 'behave' very well in the hardest hours of grief. But then someone makes you a friendly sign behind a window, or one notices that a flower that was in bud only yesterday has suddenly blossomed, or a letter slips from a drawer... and everything collapses. "

― Colette

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

― Colette , Gigi and The Cat

3 " No one asked you to be happy. Get to work. "

― Colette

4 " Be happy. It's one way of being wise "

― Colette

5 " The writer who loses his self-doubt, who gives way as he grows old to a sudden euphoria, to prolixity, should stop writing immediately: the time has come for him to lay aside his pen. "

― Colette , Earthly Paradise

6 " Time spent with a cat is never wasted. "

― Colette

7 " I did not look for her, because I was afraid of dispelling the mystery we attach to people whom we know only casually. "

― Colette , The Pure and the Impure

8 " 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. "

― Colette , My Mother's House & Sido

9 " look for a long time at what pleases you, and longer still at what pains you... "

― Colette

10 " Our perfect companions never have fewer than four feet. "

― Colette

11 " Don't you think, that there are very few men who know, without raising their voice or changing their tone, to say...what has to be said? "

― Colette

12 " It is only in pain that a woman is capable of rising above mediocrity. Her resistance to pain is infinite; one can use and abuse it without any fear that she will die, as long as some childish physical cowardice or some religious hope keeps her from the suicide that offers her a way out. "

― Colette

13 " There are days when solitude is a heady wine that intoxicates you with freedom, others when it is a bitter tonic, and still others when it is a poison that makes you beat your head against the wall. "

― Colette , Oeuvres complètes en seize volumes

14 " It was fun to see him becoming sententious again, glorying in a science he had invented, and as positive as a village soothsayer.

'So one should neither give nor receive?' I laughed. 'And if the lover is poor, his mistress indigent, then both she and he must tactfully let themselves and each other die?'

'Let them die,' he repeated.

I had accompanied him as far as the revolving glass door of the lobby.

'Let them die,' he said again. 'It's less dangerous. I can swear on my word of honor that I never gave a present or made a loan or an exchange of anything except . . . this . . .'

He waved both hands in a complicated gesture which fleetingly indicated his chest, his mouth, his genitals, his thighs. Thanks no doubt to my fatigue, I was reminded of an animal standing on its hind legs and unwinding the invisible. Then he resumed his strictly human significance, opened the door, and easily mingled with the night outside, where the sea was already a little paler than the sky. "

― Colette , The Pure and the Impure

15 " Writing only leads to more writing. "

― Colette

16 " There are no ordinary cats. "

― Colette

17 " By associating with the cat, one only risks becoming richer. "

― Colette

18 " The more sensitive the lunatic, the less able is he to resist this prying interest of the normal human being. I felt that Renée's change of key - to myself, I compared Renée to a sweet melody, a little flat despite its laborious harmonies - was approaching. "

― Colette , The Pure and the Impure

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

― Colette

20 " Total absence of humor renders life impossible. "

― Colette , Chance Acquaintances and Julie de Carneilhan