Quotes by Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

“I love my past, I love my present. I am not ashamed of what I have had, and I am not sad because I no longer have it.”

“Its nothing to be born ugly. Sensibly, the ugly woman comes to terms with her ugliness and exploits it as a grace of nature. To become ugly means the beginning of a calamity, self-willed most of the time.”

“Its 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.”

“Is suffering so very serious? I have come to doubt it. It may be quite childish, a sort of undignified pastime / Im referring to the kind of suffering a man inflicts on a woman or a woman on a man. Its extremely painful. I agree that its hardly bearable. But I very much fear that this sort of pain deserves no consideration at all. Its no more worthy of respect than old age or illness.”

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

“In the matter of furnishing, I find a certain absence of ugliness far worse than ugliness.”

“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.”

“Voluptuaries, consumed by their senses, always begin by flinging themselves with a great display of frenzy into an abyss. But they survive, they come to the surface again. And they develop a routine of the abyss: Its four o clock. At five I have my abyss... ”

“Smokers, male and female, inject and excuse idleness in their lives every time they light a cigarette.”

“It is wise to apply the oil of refined politeness to the mechanism of friendship.”

“The saddest thing in the world, is loving someone who used to love you”

“Can it be that chance has made me one of those women so immersed in one man that, whether they are barren or not, they carry with them to the grave the shriveled innocence of an old maid?”

“To a poet, silence is an acceptable response, even a flattering one.”

“You do not notice changes in what is always before you.”

“You must not pity me because my sixtieth year finds me still astonished. To be astonished is one of the surest ways of not growing old too quickly.”

“As for an authentic villain, the real thing, the absolute, the artist, one rarely meets him even once in a lifetime. The ordinary bad hat is always in part a decent fellow.”

“Researchers, with science as their authority, will be able to cut [Animals] up, alive, into small pieces, drop them from a great height to see if they are shattered by the fall, or deprive them of sleep for sixteen days and nights continuously for the purposes of an iniquitous monograph... Animal trust, undeserved faith, when at last will you turn away from us? Shall we never tire of deceiving, betraying, tormenting animals before they cease to trust us?”

“Shall we never have done with that cliche, so stupid that it could only be human, about the sympathy of animals for man when he is unhappy? Animals love happiness almost as much as we do. A fit of crying disturbs them, theyll sometimes imitate sobbing, and for a moment theyll reflect our sadness. But they flee unhappiness as they flee fever, and I believe that in the long run they are capable of boycotting it.”

“The woman who thinks she is intelligent demands equal rights with men. A woman who is intelligent does not.”

“Jealousy is not at all low, but it catches us humbled and bowed down, at first sight.”