J. Renard Quotes

Talent is like money; you don't have to have some to talk about it.

Style is to forget all styles.

Words are the coins making up the currency of sentences, and there are always too many small coins.

Literature is an occupation in which you have to keep proving your talent to people who have none

There are places and moments in which one is so completely alone that one sees the world entire.

Don't tell a woman she's pretty; tell her there's no other woman like her, and all roads will open to you.

if I were to begin my life again, I should want it as it was. I would only open my eyes a little more.

Words should be only the clothes, carefully custom-made to fit the thought.

The only man who is really free is the one who can turn down an invitation to dinner without giving an excuse.

It is more difficult to be an honorable man for a week than to be a hero for fifteen minutes.

Posterity! Why should people be less stupid tomorrow than they are today?

Acting of some actors seems natural, because they have no talent.

The less I understand life, the more I live it!

The strong do not hesitate. They settle down, they sweat, they go on to the end. They exhaust the ink, they use up the paper.

Man who waits for roast duck to fly into mouth must wait very, very long time.

It is easy for a somebody to be modest, but it is difficult to be modest when one is a nobody.

The reward of great men is that, long after they have died, one is not quite sure that they are dead

Truth makes many appeals, not the least of which is its power to shock.

In morals, always do as others do; in art, never.

A cold in the head causes less suffering than an idea.

Socialism must come down from the brain and reach the heart.

Words are the small change of thought.

Writing is the best way to talk without being interrupted.

Talent is a question of quantity. Talent does not write one page; it writes three hundred.

Our dream dashes itself against the great mystery like a wasp against a window pane. Less merciful than man, God never opens the window.

We are so happy to advise others that occasionally we even do it in their interest.

There is nothing like literature: I lose a cow, I write about her death, and my writing pays me enough to buy another cow.

Look for the ridiculous in everything and you will find it.

Style means the right word. The rest matters little.

Clarity is the politeness of the man of letters.

It astounds us to come upon other egoists, as though we alone had the right to be selfish, and to be filled with eagerness to live.

A beautiful line of verse has twelve feet, and two wings.

If money does not make you happy, give it back

To think is not enough, you must think of something.

Art: to nudge truth along a little.

I find that when I do not think of myself I do not think at all.

God does not believe in our God.

At the bottom of all patriotism there is war: that is why I am no patriot.

Add two letters two paris and it's paradise.

Let us stay at home: there we are decent. Let us not go out: our defects wait for us at the door, like flies.

Whenever I have talked to anyone at too great length, I am like a man who has drunk too much, and ashamed, doesn't know where to put himself.

You can recover from the writing malady only by falling mortally ill and dying.

Paradise does not exist, but we must nonetheless strive to be worthy of it.

Without forgiveness, metaphysics are useless.

We spend our lives talking about this mystery. Our life.

Broken china lasts longer than unbroken.

There is a justice, but we do not always see it. Discreet, smiling, it is there, at one side, a little behind injustice, which makes a big noise.

How describe the delicate thing that happens when a brilliant insect alights on a flower? Words, with their weight, fall upon the picture like birds of prey.

The truly free man is he who can decline a dinner invitation without giving an excuse.

God, he whom everyone knows, by name.