“Only by pursuing the extremes in one's nature, with all its contradictions, appetites, aversions, rages, can one hope to understand a little — oh, I admit only a very little — of what life is about.”

—  Françoise Sagan

Scars on the Soul (1972)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Oct. 3, 2023. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Only by pursuing the extremes in one's nature, with all its contradictions, appetites, aversions, rages, can one hope t…" by Françoise Sagan?
Françoise Sagan photo
Françoise Sagan 34
French writer 1935–2004

Related quotes

Anne Brontë photo

“I can't love it — what is there to love? It can't love me — or you either; it can't understand a single word you say to it, or feel one spark of gratitude for all your kindness. Wait till it can show some little affection for me, and then I'll see about loving it. At present it is nothing more than a little selfish, senseless sensualist, and if you see anything adorable in it, it's all very well — I only wonder how you can.”

Anne Brontë book The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

Source: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848), Ch. XXVIII : Parental Feelings; Arthur to Helen

“I hope this book will throw a little light on the nature of human coutage and its lack.. when the last argument of kings viz cannon or war pursues its loud & murderous course.”

Vernon Scannell (1922–2007) British boxer and poet

Argument of Kings, 1987

Willa Cather photo

“Nothing is far and nothing is near, if one desires. The world is little, people are little, human life is little. There is only one big thing — desire.”

Willa Cather book The Song of the Lark

Part I, Ch. 11
The Song of the Lark (1915)

Sylvia Plath photo

“Can you understand? Someone, somewhere, can you understand me a little, love me a little? For all my despair, for all my ideals, for all that - I love life. But it is hard, and I have so much - so very much to learn.”

Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer

Source: The Journals of Sylvia Plath

Virginia Woolf photo

“But one only woke people if one knew what one wanted to say to them. And she wanted to say not one thing, but everything. Little words that broke up the thought and dismembered it said nothing. 'About life, about death; about Mrs Ramsay”

Virginia Woolf book To the Lighthouse

no, she thought, one could say nothing to nobody.
Part III, Ch. 5
To the Lighthouse (1927)

Camille Pissarro photo

“Don't be afraid of putting on color, refine the work little by little. Don't proceed according to rules and principles, but paint what you observe and feel... One must have only one master – nature; she is the one always be consulted.”

Camille Pissarro (1830–1903) French painter

1890's

Margaret Atwood photo

“Little girls are cute and small only to adults. To one another they are not cute. They are life sized.”

Margaret Atwood book Cat's Eye

Source: Cat's Eye

Katherine Heigl photo

“I have very little patience for people who whine and complain about life not being fair. It's just the risk of life. The only thing to do is live as much as you can and as best you can, and just sort of swing it from there.”

Katherine Heigl (1978) American actress and film producer

Allure magazine (2007)

Rudyard Kipling photo

“She read a little of it. I give her review verbatim: "Oh, your book? It's all about those how-wid Wajahs. I didn't understand it."”

Rudyard Kipling book Plain Tales from the Hills

Wressley of the Foreign Office.
Plain Tales from the Hills (1888)

Berthe Morisot photo

“With what resignation we arrive at the end of life, resigned to all its failures on the one hand, all its uncertainties on the other, for so long I have hoped for nothing, and the desire for glorification after death seems to me an overblown ambition; my own ambition has been confined to a desire to fix something of all that passes, oh! Something, the least little thing, well! That ambition, too, is overblown.”

Berthe Morisot (1841–1895) painter from France

late note of Berthe Morisot, c. 1892-1895; as cited in Berthe Morisot, Jean-Dominique Rey; translation in English, Flammarion, S.A. (ISBN: 978-2-08-020345-8), Paris, 2016, p. 133
1881 - 1895

Related topics