Jules Renard Quotes

Laziness is nothing more than the habit of resting before you get tired.

Love is like an hourglass, with the heart filling up as the brain empties.

On earth there is no heaven, but there are pieces of it.

An optimist is a driver who thinks that empty space at the curb won't have a hydrant beside it.

As I grow to understand life less and less, I learn to love it more and more.

Wrinkles are engraved smiles.

I don't know if God exists, but it would be better for His reputation if He didn't.

Everything you want is out there waiting for you to ask. Everything you want also wants you. But you have to take action to get it.

Walks. The body advances, while the mind flutters around it like a bird.

Failure is not our only punishment for laziness; there is also the success of others.

There are no friends; only moments of friendship.

The ideal of calm exists in a sitting cat.

When the defects of others are perceived with so much clarity, it is because one possesses them oneself.

When I think of all the books still left for me to read, I am certain of further happiness.

I have a remarkable memory; I forget everything. It is wonderfully convenient. It is as though the world were constantly renewing itself for me.

It is not how old you are, but how you are old.

We must be greater than God, for we have to undo His injustice.

Only in this world do we laugh: in hell, it won't be possible; and in heaven, it won't be proper.

The danger of success is that it makes us forget the world's dreadful injustice.

There are moments when everything goes well, but don't be frightened.

The story I am writing exists, written in absolutely perfect fashion, some place, in the air. All I must do is find it, and copy it.

Writing is a way of talking without being interrupted.

The bourgeois are other people.

To have a horror of the bourgeois is bourgeois.

We don't understand life any better at forty than at twenty, but we know it and admit it

Liberty is the right to choose. Freedom is the result of the right choice.

If you are afraid of being lonely, don't try to be right.

Being bored is an insult to oneself.

To succeed you must add water to your wine, until there is no more wine.

Life is what our character makes it. We fashion it, as a snail does its shell. A man can say: I never made a fortune because it is not in my character to be rich.

We are ignorant of the Beyond because this ignorance is the condition of our own life. Just as ice cannot know fire except by melting and vanishing.

I finally know what distinguishes man from the other beasts: financial worries.

An egotist always resents meeting another egotist as if he alone had the right to be one.

If I had my life to live over again, I would ask that not a thing be changed, but that my eyes be opened wider.

I am not sincere, even when I say I am not.

Fame is a constant effort

I am never bored; to be bored is an insult to one's self.

Writing is the only profession where no one considers you ridiculous if you earn no money.

Be modest! It is the kind of pride least likely to offend.

We are in the world to laugh. In purgatory or in hell we shall no longer be able to do so. And in heaven it would not be proper.

It is when we are faced with death that we turn most bookish.

In literature, there are only oxen. The biggest ones are the geniuses-the ones who toil eighteen hours a day without tiring.

If one were to build the house of happiness, the largest space would be the waiting room.

Style is to forget all styles.

Dreaming is to think by moonlight by the light of an inner moon.

It is not enough to be happy, it is also necessary that others not be.

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

Some people are so boring that they make you waste an entire day in five minutes.

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

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