Quotes by Jules Renard

• We are so happy to advise others that occasionally we even do it in their interest.
• The only man who is really free is the one who can turn down an invitation to dinner without giving an excuse.
• Writing is the only profession where no one considers you ridiculous if you earn no money.
• The bourgeois are other people.
• Socialism must come down from the brain and reach the heart.
• The danger of success is that it makes us forget the world's dreadful injustice.
• The ideal of calm exists in a sitting cat.
• Talent is a matter of quantity. Talent does not write on page, it writes three hundred.
• The reward of great men is that, long after they have died, one is not quite sure that they are dead.
• The story I am writing exists, written in absolutely perfect fashion, some place, in the air. All I must do is find it, and copy it.
• There are moments when everything goes well, but don't be frightened.
• Truth makes many appeals, not the least of which is its power to shock.
• On earth there is no heaven, but there are pieces of it.
• We spend our lives talking about this mystery. Our life.
• Words are the coins making up the currency of sentences, and there are always too many small coins.
• Words are the small change of thought.
• It doesn't pay to say too much when you are mad enough to choke. For the word that stings the deepest is the word that is never spoke, Let the other fellow wrangle till the storm has blown away, then he'll do a heap of thinking about the things you didn't say.
• There are places and moments in which one is so completely alone that one sees the world entire.
• Everything you want is out there waiting for you to ask. Everything you want also wants you. But you have to take action to get it.
• Laziness is nothing more than the habit of resting before you get tired.
• A beautiful line of verse has twelve feet, and two wings.
• A cold in the head causes less suffering than an idea.
• An optimist is a driver who thinks that empty space at the curb won't have a hydrant beside it.
• Never does one feel oneself so utterly helpless as in trying to speak comfort for great bereavement. I will not try it. Time is the only comforter for the loss of a mother.
• Don't tell a woman she's pretty; tell her there's no other woman like her, and all roads will open to you.
• Failure is not our only punishment for laziness; there is also the success of others.
• Fame is a constant effort.
• I am not sincere, even when I say I am not.
• I don't know if God exists, but it would be better for His reputation if He didn't.
• I finally know what distinguishes man from the other beasts: financial worries.
• If you are afraid of being lonely, don't try to be right.
• It is not how old you are, but how you are old.
• Love is like an hourglass, with the heart filling up as the brain empties.
• Man who waits for roast duck to fly into mouth must wait very, very long time.
• As I grow to understand life less and less I grow to love it more and more.