Sidonie Gabrielle Colette Quotes

The day after that wedding night I found that a distance of a thousand miles, abyss and discovery and irremediable metamorphosis, separated me from the day before.

It is not a bad thing that children should occasionally, and politely, put parents in their place.

If I can't have too many truffles, I'll do without truffles.

I believe there are more urgent and honorable occupations than the incomparable waste of time we call suffering.

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.

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.

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.

Never touch a butterfly's wing with your finger.

By an image we hold on to our lost treasures, but it is the wrenching loss that forms the image, composes, binds the bouquet.

A woman who thinks she is intelligent demands the same rights as man. An intelligent woman gives up.

There are connoisseurs of blue just as there are connoisseurs of wine.

A kindly gesture bestowed by us on an animal arouses prodigies of understanding and gratitude.

It takes time for the absent to assume their true shape in our thoughts.

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

I went to collect the few personal belongings which...I held to be invaluable: my cat, my resolve to travel, and my solitude.

In its early stages, insomnia is almost an oasis in which those who have to think or suffer darkly take refuge.

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.

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

beautiful December grapes, blue as plums, every grape a little skinful of sweet, tasteless water

One keeps forgetting old age up to the very brink of the grave.

Sincerity is not a spontaneous flower nor is modesty either.

January, month of empty pockets! let us endure this evil month, anxious as a theatrical producer's forehead.

I've entered the world of wine without any professional training, but a definite appetite for good bottles.

It is wise to apply the oil of refined politeness to the mechanisms of friendship.

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.

Perhaps the only misplaced curiosity is that which persists in trying to find out here, on this side of death, what lies beyond the grave.

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

A pretty little collection of weaknesses and a terror of spiders are our indispensable stock-in-trade with the men...

I want nothing from love, in short, but love.

A happy childhood is poor preparation for human contacts.

At sixty-three years of age, less a quarter, one still has plans.

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

The faults of husbands are often caused by the excess virtues of their wives.

My true friends have always given me that supreme proof of devotion, a spontaneous aversion for the man I loved.

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

No temptation can ever be measured by the value of its object.

I have found my voice again and the art of using it.

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.

At the top of the iron staircase leading to the stage, the good, dry, dusty warmth wraps me round like a comfortable dirty cloak.

The true traveler is he who goes on foot, and even then, he sits down a lot of the time.

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.

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.

You don't think before you do something foolish. You do your thinking afterwards.

Truffles must come to the table in their own stock and as you break open this jewel sprung from a poverty-stricken soil, imagine - if you have never visited it - the desolate kingdom where it rules.

The only virtue on which I pride myself is my self-doubt; when a writer loses her self-doubt, the time has come to lay aside her pen.

That lovely voice; how I should weep for joy if I could hear it now!

Don't cudgel your brains over my little problems.

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.

If we want to be sincere, we must admit that there is a well-nourished love and an ill-nourished love. And the rest is literature.