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.

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

- and how time flies! What, has it already been twenty years, already forty years that we are together? Why, how terrible! We haven't yet said all we wanted to say to each other... May we have a little respite, or else may we be allowed to begin all over again!

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

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

Our perfect companions never have fewer than four feet.

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

Time spent with a cat is never wasted.

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.

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

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.

Chance, my master and my friend, will, I feel sure, deign once again to send me the spirits of his unruly kingdom. All my trust is now in him- and in myself. But above all in him, for when I go under he always fishes me out, seizing and shaking me like a life-saving dog whose teeth tear my skin a little every time. 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.

Never touch a butterfly's wing with your finger.

There are days when solitude, for someone my age, 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.

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

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

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

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

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

There are no ordinary cats.

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

On the first of May, with my comrades of the catechism class, I laid lilac, chamomile and rose before the altar of the Virgin, and returned full of pride to show my blessed posy. My mother laughed her irreverent laugh and, looking at my bunch of flowers, which was bringing the may-bug into the sitting-room right under the lamp, she said: Do you suppose it wasn't already blessed before?

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.

Books, books, books. It was not that I read so much. I read and re-read the same ones. But all of them were necessary to me. Their presence, their smell, the letters of their titles, and the texture of their leather bindings.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

Sincerity is not a spontaneous flower nor is modesty either.

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

Writing only leads to more writing.

I am indebted to the cat for a particular kind of honorable deceit, for a greater control over myself, for a characteristic aversion to brutal sounds, and for the need to keep silent for long periods of time.

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

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.

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 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.

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.

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

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

Total absence of humor renders life impossible.

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

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.

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

A happy childhood is poor preparation for human contacts.