Quote collection
80 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"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."
"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."
"But what is the heart, madame? It's worth less than people think. it's quite accommodating, it accepts anything. You give it whatever you have, it's not very particular. But the body... Ha! That's something else again! It has a cultivated taste, as they say, it knows what it wants. A heart doesn't choose, and one always ends up by loving."
"I've entered the world of wine without any professional training, but a definite appetite for good bottles."
"My true friends have always given me that supreme proof of devotion, a spontaneous aversion for the man I loved."
"The faults of husbands are often caused by the excess virtues of their wives."
"If he's getting married, he's not longer interesting."
"I want nothing from love, in short, but love."
"Voluptuaries, consumed by their senses, always begin by flinging themselves with a great display of frenzy into an abyss. But they survive, they come to the surface again. And they develop a routine of the abyss: It's four o clock. At five I have my abyss."
"A pretty little collection of weaknesses and a terror of spiders are our indispensable stock-in-trade with the men..."
"A happy childhood is poor preparation for human contacts."
"At sixty-three years of age, less a quarter, one still has plans."
"Is suffering so very serious? ...I'm referring to the kind of suffering a man inflicts on a woman or a woman on a man. It's extremely painful... hardly bearable. But I very much fear that this sort of pain... is no more worthy of respect than old age or illness."
"You do not notice changes in what is always before you."
"Total absence of humor renders life impossible."
"To a poet, silence is an acceptable response, even a flattering one."
"Researchers, with science as their authority, will be able to cut animals up, alive, into small pieces, drop them from a great height to see if they are shattered by the fall, or deprive them of sleep for sixteen days and nights continuously for the purposes of an iniquitous monograph. . . . Animal trust, undeserved faith, when at last will you turn away from us? Shall we never tire of deceiving, betraying, tormenting animals before they cease to trust us?"
"No temptation can ever be measured by the value of its object."
"We only do well the things we like doing."
"I have found my voice again and the art of using it."