Quotes by Sidonie Colette

• I believe there are more urgent and honorable occupations than the incomparable waste of time we call suffering.
• A happy childhood is poor preparation for human contacts.
• A pretty little collection of weaknesses and a terror of spiders are our indispensable stock-in-trade with the men.
• 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.
• 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.
• Be happy. It's one way of being wise.
• You do not notice changes in what is always before you.
• Smokers, male and female, inject and excuse idleness in their lives every time they light a cigarette.
• 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.
• The lovesick, the betrayed, and the jealous all smell alike.
• The true traveler is he who goes on foot, and even then, he sits down a lot of the time.
• 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.
• The faults of husbands are often caused by the excess virtues of their wives.
• To a poet, silence is an acceptable response, even a flattering one.
• Total absence of humor renders life impossible.
• Writing only leads to more writing.
• 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.
• 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.
• You will do foolish things, but do them with enthusiasm.
• 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.
• It is not a bad thing that children should occasionally, and politely, put parents in their place.
• 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.
• In the matter of furnishing, I find a certain absence of ugliness far worse than ugliness.
• In its early stages, insomnia is almost an oasis in which those who have to think or suffer darkly take refuge.
• Sincerity is not a spontaneous flower nor is modesty either.
• It is wise to apply the oil of refined politeness to the mechanism of friendship.
• January, month of empty pockets! let us endure this evil month, anxious as a theatrical producer's forehead.
• Jealousy is not at all low, but it catches us humbled and bowed down, at first sight.
• Our perfect companions never have fewer than four feet.
• My true friends have always given me that supreme proof of devotion, a spontaneous aversion for the man I loved.
• Never touch a butterfly's wing with your finger.
• No temptation can ever be measured by the value of its object.
• 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.
• One keeps forgetting old age up to the very brink of the grave.
• Look for a long time at what pleases you, and a longer time at what pains you.