Guy de Maupassant: Citations en anglais (Page 2)

“One sometimes weeps over one's illusions with as much bitterness as over a death.”

“The only certainty is death.”

“If I could, I would stop the passage of time. But hour follows on hour, minute on minute, each second robbing me of a morsel of myself for the nothing of tomorrow. I shall never experience this moment again.”

“Life is a slope. As long as you're going up you're always looking towards the top and you feel happy, but when you reach it, suddenly you can see the road going downhill and death at the end of it all. It's slow going up and quick going down.”

“Conversation. What is it? A Mystery! It's the art of never seeming bored, of touching everything with interest, of pleasing with trifles, of being fascinating with nothing at all.”

“We breathe, sleep, drink, eat, work and then die! The end of life is death. What do you long for? Love? A few kisses and you will be powerless. Money? What for? To gratify your desires. Glory? What coems after it all? Death! Death alone is certain.”

“It is the encounters with people that make life worth living.”

“And taking her friend’s hand, she put it on her breast, on that firm round covering of a woman’s heart which the male often finds so satisfying that he makes no attempt to find what lies beneath it.”

“I have coveted everything and taken pleasure in nothing”

“Patriotism is a kind of religion; it is the egg from which wars are hatched.”

“Night was a very different matter. It was dense, thicker than the very walls, and it was empty, so black, so immense that within it you could brush against appalling things and feel roaming and prowling around a strange, mysterious horror.”

“There is only one good thing in life, and that is love. And how you misunderstand it! how you spoil it! You treat it as something solemn like a sacrament, or something to be bought, like a dress.”

“You have the army of mediocrities followed by the multitude of fools. As the mediocrities and the fools always form the immense majority, it is impossible for them to elect an intelligent government.”

“Broad daylight does not encourage the apprehension of horror.”

“Great minds that are healthy are never considered geniuses, while this sublime qualification is lavished on brains that are often inferior but are slightly touched by madness.”

“In the kingdom of the blind the one-eyed man is king.”

“We love our mother unknowingly, and only realize how deep-rooted that love is at the ultimate separation.”

“We live always under the weight of the old and odious customs … of our barbarous ancestors.”

“Any government has as much of a duty to avoid war as a ship's captain has to avoid a shipwreck.”