Colette: Trending quotes (page 3)

“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)

Friendship

“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

Girl

“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.”

Colette

Le Pur et l'Impur (The Pure and the Impure) (1932)

Death

“A pretty little collection of weaknesses and a terror of spiders are our indispensable stock-in-trade with the men… nine men out of ten are superstitious, nineteen out of twenty believe in the evil eye, and ninety-eight out of a hundred are afraid of spiders. They forgive us — oh! for many things, but not for the absence in us of their own feelings.”

Colette

Aunt Alicia
Gigi (1945)

Men , Feeling , Forgiveness , Evil

“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.”

Colette

Mes Apprentissages (1936)

Flowers , Memory

“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.””

Colette

Le Pur et l'Impur (The Pure and the Impure) (1932)

Sense

“It’s nothing to be born ugly. Sensibly, the ugly woman comes to terms with her ugliness and exploits it as a grace of nature. To become ugly means the beginning of a calamity, self-willed most of the time.”

Colette

Journey for Myself (1971) “Beauties,” Quatre Saisons (c. 1928).

Nature , Time

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

Colette

Le Pur et l'Impur (The Pure and the Impure) (1932)

Light , Time

“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

Way , Time

“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)

Travel , 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.”

Colette

“The South of France”, Earthly Paradise (1966) ed. Robert Phelps

Parting

“Whether you are dealing with an animal or a child, to convince is to weaken.”

Colette

Le Pur et l'Impur (The Pure and the Impure) (1932)

Animals

“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

Death , Change , Time

“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

Love , Dogs , Forgiveness

“Don’t ever wear artistic jewellry; it wrecks a woman’s reputation.”

Colette

Aunt Alicia
Gigi (1945)

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

Colette

Source: Le Pur et l'Impur (The Pure and the Impure) (1932), Ch. 9

Friendship

“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.”

Colette

Noces (1945)

Wedding , Night

“In the matter of furnishing, I find a certain absence of ugliness far worse than ugliness.”

Colette

The Photographer’s Wife
Gigi (1945)

“Humility has its origin in an awareness of unworthiness, and sometimes too in a dazzled awareness of saintliness.”

Colette

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