Colette Quotes

Our perfect companions never have fewer than four feet.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

Time spent with cats is never wasted.

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.

You will do foolish things but do them with enthusiasm.

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

What a wonderful life I've had! I only wish I'd realized it sooner.

There are no ordinary cats.

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.

What a wonderful life I’ve had! I only wish I’d realized it sooner.

You were listening at the door, Gigi!""No, Grandmamma.""Yes, you had your ear to the keyhole. You must never listen at key-holes. You don't hear properly and so you get things all wrong.

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

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

You will do foolish things, but do them with enthusiasm.

Friendship which is of its nature a delicate thing fastidious slow of growth is easily checked will hesitate demur recoil where love good old blustering love bowls ahead and blunders through every obstacle.

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.", 1964)

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

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.

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.

Hope costs nothing.

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

Time spent with a cat is never wasted.

Total absence of humor renders life impossible.

We only do well the things we like doing.

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

It takes time for the absent to assume their true shape in our thoughts. After death they take on a firmer outline and then cease to change.

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?

Be happy. It's one way of being wise