Colette Quotes (59 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

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Famous Colette Quotes

“Our perfect companions never have fewer than four feet.”

Colette

“I love my past. I love my present. I'm not ashamed of what I've had, and I'm not sad because I have it no longer.”

Colette Chéri

Source: La Fin de Chéri (The Last of Cheri) (1926)

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

Colette

New York World-Telegram and Sun (1961)

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

Colette

“The woman who thinks she is intelligent demands equal rights with men. A woman who is intelligent does not.”

Colette

“Time spent with a cat is never wasted.”

Colette

Colette Quotes about time

“look for a long time at what pleases you, and longer still at what pains you…”

Colette

“Sometimes in my very happiest moments, I feel like crying. My eyes grow dim, my heart seems to choke me. I would like to be sure, in such times of anguish, that everybody loves me; that there is nowhere in the world a sad dog behind a closed door, that no evil will ever come…”

Colette

Barks and Purrs
Context: Toby-Dog: It seems to me that of the two of us it's you they make the most of, and yet you do all the grumbling.
Kiki-The-Demure: A dog's logic, that! The more one gives the more I demand.
Toby-Dog: That's wrong. It's indiscreet.
Kiki-The-Demure: Not at all. I have a right to everything.
Toby-Dog: To everything? And I?
Kiki-The-Demure: I don't imagine you lack anything, do you?
Toby-Dog: Ah, I don't know. Sometimes in my very happiest moments, I feel like crying. My eyes grow dim, my heart seems to choke me. I would like to be sure, in such times of anguish, that everybody loves me; that there is nowhere in the world a sad dog behind a closed door, that no evil will ever come...
Kiki-The-Demure: And then what dreadful thing happens?
Toby-Dog: You know very well! Inevitably, at that moment She appears, carrying a bottle with horrible yellow stuff floating in it — Castor Oil!

“Then, bidding farewell to The Knick-Knack, I went to collect the few personal belongings which, at that time, I held to be invaluable: my cat, my resolve to travel, and my solitude.”

Colette

Source: Gigi, Julie de Carneilhan, and Chance Acquaintances: Three Short Novels

“It takes time for the absent to assume their true shape in our thoughts. After death they take on a firmer outline and then cease to change.”

Colette

"The Captain", Earthly Paradise (1966) ed. Robert Phelps

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

Colette

Paris From My Window (1944)

“The writer who loses his self-doubt, who gives way as he grows old to a sudden euphoria, to prolixity, should stop writing immediately: the time has come for him to lay aside his pen.”

Colette

Speech on being elected to the Belgian Academy, as quoted in “Lady of Letters” Pt. 4, Earthly Paradise (1966) ed. Robert Phelps

Colette Quotes about love

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

Colette book Break of Day

Break of Day (1928)

“Music is love in search of a word.”

Colette

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

Colette book The Vagabond

Source: The Vagabond

“Kiki-The-Demure: Once when I was little She tried to give me castor oil. I scratched and bit her so, she never tried again. Ha! She must have thought she held the devil between her knees. I squirmed, blew fire through my nostrils, multiplied my twenty claws by a hundred, my teeth by one thousand, and finally — disappeared as if by magic.
Toby-Dog: I wouldn't dare do that. You see, I love her. I love her enough to forgive her even the torture of the bath.”

Colette

Barks and Purrs

Colette: Trending quotes

“Her childhood, then her adolescence, had taught her patience, hope, silence and the easy manipulation of the weapons and virtues of all prisoners.”

Colette Chéri

Chéri (1920) pt. 2

“There are no ordinary cats.”

Colette

“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.”

Colette book The Vagabond

Source: The Vagabond

Colette Quotes

“Hope costs nothing.”

Colette

“What a wonderful life I’ve had! I only wish I’d realized it sooner.”

Colette

“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.”

Colette

The Photographer’s Wife
Gigi (1945)

“Can it be that chance has made me one of those women so immersed in one man that, whether they are barren or not, they carry with them to the grave the shrivelled innocence of an old maid?”

Colette

Sido (1929)

“Boredom helps one to make decisions.”

Colette

Aunt Alicia
Gigi (1945)

“Nothing ages a woman like living in the country.”

Colette

L'Envers du music hall (Music Hall Sidelights), "On Tour" (1913)

“For to dream and then to return to reality only means that our qualms suffer a change of place and significance.”

Colette

In Gigi, and Selected Writings (1963).

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

Colette

My Mother’s House, "The Priest on the Wall" (1922)

“We only do well the things we like doing.”

Colette

Prisons and Paradise (1932)

“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."

(, 1964)”

Colette

“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.”

Colette

Freedom (1908)
Source: Oeuvres complètes en seize volumes

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

Colette

“No one asked you to be happy. Get to work.”

Colette

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

Colette

“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.”

Colette

“Total absence of humor renders life impossible.”

Colette

Chance Acquaintances (1952)
Source: Chance Acquaintances and Julie de Carneilhan

“What a delight it is to make friends with someone you have despised!”

Colette

“Sido and I”, Earthly Paradise (1966) ed. Robert Phelps

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

Colette

Claudine and Annie (1903)

“If he's getting married, he's not longer interesting.”

Colette

Source: Gigi & The Cat

“I did not look for her, because I was afraid of dispelling the mystery we attach to people whom we know only casually.”

Colette book The Pure and the Impure

Source: The Pure and the Impure

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

Colette

Paris From My Window (1944)

“I have found my voice again and the art of using it…”

Colette book The Vagabond

Source: The Vagabond

“To be astonished is one of the surest ways of not growing old too quickly.”

Colette

Speech on being elected to the Belgian Academy, as quoted https://books.google.com/books?id=5KMkAQAAMAAJ&dq=%22To+be+astonished+is+one+of+the+surest+ways+of+not+growing+old+too+quickly.%22+intitle%3A%22Earthly+Paradise%22+inauthor%3AColette&focus=searchwithinvolume&q=%22You+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.%22 in “Lady of Letters” Pt. 4, Earthly Paradise (autobiography, 1966) ed. Robert Phelps <br class="br">Context: 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.

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

Colette

As quoted in Close to Colette by Maurice Goudeket
Attributed

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

Colette

Mes Apprentissages (1936)

“But just as delicate fare does not stop you from craving for saveloys, so tried and exquisite friendship does not take away your taste for something new and dubious.”

Colette

Chambre d’Hôtel, "The Rainy Moon" (1940)

“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.”

Colette

“Wedding Day”, Earthly Paradise (1966) ed. Robert Phelps