Quotes by Guy de Maupassant

It was then between one oclock in the morning and half-past that hour; the sky soon cleared a bit before me, and the lunar crescent peeped out from behind the clouds - that sad crescent of the last quarter of the moon. The crescent of the new moon, that which rises at four or five oclock in the evening, is clear, bright and silvery; but that which rises after midnight is red, sinister and disquieting; it is the true crescent of the witches Sabbath: all night-walkers must have remarked the contrast. The first, even when it is as narrow as a silver thread, projects a cheery ray, which rejoices the heart, and casts on the ground sharply defined shadows; while the latter reflects only a mournful glow, so wan that the shadows are bleared and indistinct. (Who Knows?)

It was one of those bitter mornings when the whole of nature is shiny, brittle, and hard, like crystal. The trees, decked out in frost, seem to have sweated ice; the earth resounds beneath ones feet; the tiniest sounds carry a long way in the dry air; the blue sky is bright as a mirror, and the sun moves through space in icy brilliance, casting on the frozen world rays which bestow no warmth upon anything.

Military men are the scourges of the world.

They were so absorbed in their plotting that they did not hear Boule de Suif return. But the Comtes whispered shh! made them all look up. There she was. A sudden silence fell, and at first a feeling of embarrassment prevented them from speaking to her. At last, however, the Comtesse, more of an adept than the rest in social duplicity, asked her: Did you enjoy the christening?

I entered literary life as a meteor, and I shall leave it like a thunder

After all, life is never so jolly or so miserable as people seem to think.

Envy, bitter envy, was permeating his soul drop by drop, like a poison that tainted all his pleasures and made his life hateful.

I love the night passionately. I love it as I love my country, or my mistress, with an instinctive, deep, and unshakeable love. I love it with all my senses: I love to see it, I love to breathe it in, I love to open my ears to its silence, I love my whole body to be caressed by its blackness. Skylarks sing in the sunshine, the blue sky, the warm air, in the fresh morning light. The owl flies by night, a dark shadow passing through the darkness; he hoots his sinister, quivering hoot, as though he delights in the intoxicating black immensity of space.

She thought constantly about Paris and avidly read all the society pages in the papers. Their accounts of receptions, celebrations, the clothes worn, and all the accompanying delights enjoyed, whetted her appetite still further. Above all, however, she was fascinated by what these reports merely hinted at. The cleverly phrased allusions half-lifted a veil beyond which could be glimpsed devastatingly attractive horizons promising a whole new world of wicked pleasure. From where she lived, she looked on Paris as representing the height of all magnificent luxury as well as licentiousness...she conjured up the images of all the famous men who made the headlines and shone like brilliant comets in the darkness of her sombre sky. She pictured the madly exciting lives they must lead, moving from one den of vice to the next, indulging in never-ending and extraordinarily voluptuous orgies, and practising such complex and sophisticated sex as to defy the imagination. It seemed to her that hidden behind the façades of the houses lining the canyon-like boulevards of the city, some amazing erotic secret must lie.The uneventful life she lived had preserved her like a winter apple in an attic. Yet she was consumed from within by unspoken and obsessive desires. She wondered if she would die without ever having tasted the wicked delights which life had to offer, without ever, not even once, having plunged into the ocean of voluptuous pleasure which, to her, was Paris.

Patriotism is a kind of religion it is the egg from which wars are hatched.

Patriotism is a kind of religion it is the egg from which wars are hatched.

It is better to be unhappy in love than unhappy in marriage, but some people manage to be both.

The essence of life is the smile of round female bottoms, under the shadow of cosmic boredom.

“If I could, I would stop the passage of time. But hour follows on hour, minute on minute, each second robbing me of a morsel of myself for the nothing of tomorrow. I shall never experience this moment again.”

“In fact living is dying.”

“Whence come those mysterious influences which change our happiness into discouragement, and our self-confidence into diffidence?”

“The only certainty is death.”

“The past attracts me, the present frightens me, because the future is death.”

“Life is a slope. As long as youre going up youre always looking towards the top and you feel happy, but when you reach it, suddenly you can see the road going downhill and death at the end of it all. Its slow going up and quick going down.”