Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

“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.”

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

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

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

“Never touch a butterfly's wing with your finger.”

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

“Our perfect companions never have fewer than four feet.”

“A happy childhood is poor preparation for human contacts.”

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

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

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

“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.”

“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 t...”

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

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

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

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

“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.”

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