Top 111 Quotes & Sayings by Jules Renard - Page 2

Broken china lasts longer than unbroken.

Dreaming is to think by moonlight by the light of an inner moon.

Paradise does not exist, but we must nonetheless strive to be worthy of it.

How describe the delicate thing that happens when a brilliant insect alights on a flower? Words, with their weight, fall upon the picture like birds of prey.

At the bottom of all patriotism there is war: that is why I am no patriot.

Life is what our character makes it. We fashion it, as a snail does its shell. A man can say: I never made a fortune because it is not in my character to be rich.

I have no religion,’ says Borneau, ‘but I respect the religion of others. Religion is sacred.’ Why this privilege, this immunity?... A believer creates God in his own image; if he is ugly, his God will be morally ugly. Why should moral ugliness be respectable?

It is easy for a somebody to be modest, but it is difficult to be modest when one is a nobody.

The truly free man is he who can decline a dinner invitation without giving an excuse.

To have a horror of the bourgeois is bourgeois.

To succeed you must add water to your wine, until there is no more wine.

God, he whom everyone knows, by name.

Be modest! It is the kind of pride least likely to offend.

How many people have wanted to kill themselves, and have been content with tearing up their photograph!

An egotist always resents meeting another egotist as if he alone had the right to be one.

I find that when I do not think of myself I do not think at all.

Acting of some actors seems natural, because they have no talent.

Add two letters two paris and it's paradise.

There is nothing like literature: I lose a cow, I write about her death, and my writing pays me enough to buy another cow.

There is a justice, but we do not always see it. Discreet, smiling, it is there, at one side, a little behind injustice, which makes a big noise.

Style is to forget all styles.

Talent is like money; you don't have to have some to talk about it.

The reward of great men is that, long after they have died, one is not quite sure that they are dead

In morals, always do as others do; in art, never.

Style means the right word. The rest matters little.

Our dream dashes itself against the great mystery like a wasp against a window pane. Less merciful than man, God never opens the window.

Writing is a way of talking without being interrupted.

Look for the ridiculous in everything and you will find it.

The less I understand life, the more I live it!

Art: to nudge truth along a little.

Posterity! Why should people be less stupid tomorrow than they are today?

In literature, there are only oxen. The biggest ones are the geniuses-the ones who toil eighteen hours a day without tiring.

The strong do not hesitate. They settle down, they sweat, they go on to the end. They exhaust the ink, they use up the paper.

If one were to build the house of happiness, the largest space would be the waiting room.

Those moments when you feel you want to read something truly beautiful. The eyes make a tour of the library, and there is nothing. Then you decide to take no matter what, and it is full of beautiful things.

Fame is a constant effort

In the most complete friendship there is always a little empty space, like the space in an egg.

Walks. The body advances, while the mind flutters around it like a bird.

It astounds us to come upon other egoists, as though we alone had the right to be selfish, and to be filled with eagerness to live.

The profession of letters is, after all, the only one in which one can make no money without being ridiculous.

The void yields up nothing. You have to be a great poet to make it ring.

Whenever I have talked to anyone at too great length, I am like a man who has drunk too much, and ashamed, doesn't know where to put himself.

The horse is the only animal into which one can bang nails.

You can recover from the writing malady only by falling mortally ill and dying.

Literature is an occupation in which you have to keep proving your talent to people who have none

It is in the midst of the city that one writes the most inspiring pages about the country.

Let us stay at home: there we are decent. Let us not go out: our defects wait for us at the door, like flies.

Somewhere in the shadow cast by every famous man is a feminine victim.

Clarity is the politeness of the man of letters.

Do not ask me to be kind; just ask me to act as though I were.

I am afraid I shall not find him, but I shall still look for him, for if he exists, he may be appreciative of my efforts.