Sidonie Gabrielle Colette
The lovesick, the betrayed, and the jealous all smell alike.Collection: Jealousy
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.Collection: Sad
Be happy. It's one way of being wise.Collection: Wisdom
A woman who thinks she is intelligent demands the same rights as man. An intelligent woman gives up.Collection: Equality
Jealousy is not at all low, but it catches us humbled and bowed down, at first sight.Collection: Jealousy
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.Collection: Freedom
Total absence of humor renders life impossible.Collection: Humor
The woman who thinks she is intelligent demands equal rights with men. A woman who is intelligent does not.Collection: Intelligence
It is wise to apply the oil of refined politeness to the mechanism of friendship.Collection: Friendship
Writing only leads to more writing.Collection: Communication
What a wonderful life I've had! I only wish I'd realized it sooner.Collection: Life
You will do foolish things, but do them with enthusiasm.
Our perfect companions never have fewer than four feet.
I am going away with him to an unknown country where I shall have no past and no name, and where I shall be born again with a new face and an untried heart.
Look for a long time at what pleases you, and a longer time at what pains you.
Sincerity is not a spontaneous flower nor is modesty either.
Never touch a butterfly's wing with your finger.
I believe there are more urgent and honorable occupations than the incomparable waste of time we call suffering.
January, month of empty pockets! let us endure this evil month, anxious as a theatrical producer's forehead.
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.
My true friends have always given me that supreme proof of devotion, a spontaneous aversion for the man I loved.
The true traveler is he who goes on foot, and even then, he sits down a lot of the time.
In its early stages, insomnia is almost an oasis in which those who have to think or suffer darkly take refuge.
If I can't have too many truffles, I'll do without truffles.
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.
The faults of husbands are often caused by the excess virtues of their wives.
You do not notice changes in what is always before you.
To a poet, silence is an acceptable response, even a flattering one.
A happy childhood is poor preparation for human contacts.
Sit down and put down everything that comes into your head and then you're a writer. But an author is one who can judge his own stuff's worth, without pity, and destroy most of it.
No temptation can ever be measured by the value of its object.
It is not a bad thing that children should occasionally, and politely, put parents in their place.
One keeps forgetting old age up to the very brink of the grave.
Smokers, male and female, inject and excuse idleness in their lives every time they light a cigarette.
In the matter of furnishing, I find a certain absence of ugliness far worse than ugliness.
A pretty little collection of weaknesses and a terror of spiders are our indispensable stock-in-trade with the men.
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.
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.
Time spent with a cat is never wasted.Collection: Time
Hope costs nothing.Collection: Cost
There are days when solitude, for someone my age, 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.Collection: Wall
There are connoisseurs of blue just as there are connoisseurs of wine.Collection: Wine
I went to collect the few personal belongings which...I held to be invaluable: my cat, my resolve to travel, and my solitude.Collection: Cat
There are no ordinary cats.Collection: Cat
Chance, my master and my friend, will, I feel sure, deign once again to send me the spirits of his unruly kingdom. All my trust is now in him- and in myself. But above all in him, for when I go under he always fishes me out, seizing and shaking me like a life-saving dog whose teeth tear my skin a little every time. 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.Collection: Dog
Books, books, books. It was not that I read so much. I read and re-read the same ones. But all of them were necessary to me. Their presence, their smell, the letters of their titles, and the texture of their leather bindings.Collection: Book
By an image we hold on to our lost treasures, but it is the wrenching loss that forms the image, composes, binds the bouquet.Collection: Loss
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.Collection: Love
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.Collection: Art
To write is to pour one’s innermost self passionately upon the tempting paper, at such frantic speed that sometimes one’s hand struggles and rebels, overdriven by the impatient god which guides it - and to find, next day, in place of the golden bough that bloomed miraculously in that dazzling hour, a withered bramble and a stunted flower.Collection: Struggle