Top 84 Quotes & Sayings by Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

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

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

Sincerity is not a spontaneous flower nor is modesty either.

A happy childhood is poor preparation for human contacts.

Writing only leads to more writing.

January, month of empty pockets! let us endure this evil month, anxious as a theatrical producer's forehead.

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.

Look for a long time at what pleases you, and a longer time at what pains you.

Sit down and 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.

A woman who thinks she is intelligent demands the same rights as man. An intelligent woman gives up.

There are days when solitude 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.

One keeps forgetting old age up to the very brink of the grave.

I am going away with him to an unknown country where I shall have no past and no name, and where I shall be born again with a new face and an untried heart.

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

The faults of husbands are often caused by the excess virtues of their wives.

The lovesick, the betrayed, and the jealous all smell alike.

It is wise to apply the oil of refined politeness to the mechanism of friendship.

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

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

A pretty little collection of weaknesses and a terror of spiders are our indispensable stock-in-trade with the men.

Total absence of humor renders life impossible.

Never touch a butterfly's wing with your finger.

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.

I believe there are more urgent and honorable occupations than the incomparable waste of time we call suffering.

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

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

Jealousy is not at all low, but it catches us humbled and bowed down, at first sight.

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.

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

No temptation can ever be measured by the value of its object.

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.

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

I love my past, I love my present. I am not ashamed of what I have had, and I am not sad because I no longer have it.

Our perfect companions never have fewer than four feet.

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

What a wonderful life I've had! I only wish I'd realized it sooner.

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

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

There are connoisseurs of blue just as there are connoisseurs of wine.

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

- and how time flies! What, has it already been twenty years, already forty years that we are together? Why, how terrible! We haven't yet said all we wanted to say to each other... May we have a little respite, or else may we be allowed to begin all over again!

It takes time for the absent to assume their true shape in our thoughts.

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.

There are no ordinary cats.

Hope costs nothing.

But what is the heart, madame? It's worth less than people think. it's quite accommodating, it accepts anything. You give it whatever you have, it's not very particular. But the body... Ha! That's something else again! It has a cultivated taste, as they say, it knows what it wants. A heart doesn't choose, and one always ends up by loving.

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

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.

By an image we hold on to our lost treasures, but it is the wrenching loss that forms the image, composes, binds the bouquet.

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.

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

I have found my voice again and the art of using it.

It's so curious: one can resist tears and 'behave' very well in the hardest hours of grief. But then someone makes you a friendly sign behind a window, or one notices that a flower that was in bud only yesterday has suddenly blossomed, or a letter slips from a drawer... and everything collapses.

We only do well the things we like doing.

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.

Chance, my master and my friend, will, I feel sure, deign once again to send me the spirits of his unruly kingdom. All my trust is now in him- and in myself. But above all in him, for when I go under he always fishes me out, seizing and shaking me like a life-saving dog whose teeth tear my skin a little every time. 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.

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

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

Time spent with a cat is never wasted.

I am indebted to the cat for a particular kind of honorable deceit, for a greater control over myself, for a characteristic aversion to brutal sounds, and for the need to keep silent for long periods of time.