Jules Renard Quotes & Sayings

I can't get around this dilemma: I have a horror of troubles, but they whip me up, they make me talented. Peace and well-being, on the contrary, paralyze me. Either be a nobody, or everlastingly plagued. — Jules Renard

Art: to nudge truth along a little. — Jules Renard

God does not believe in our God. — Jules Renard

I am never bored; to be bored is an insult to one's self. — Jules Renard

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. — Jules Renard

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. — Jules Renard

An optimist is a driver who thinks that empty space at the curb won't have a hydrant beside it. — Jules Renard

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

Wrinkles are engraved smiles. — Jules Renard

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. — Jules Renard

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

We spend our lives talking about this mystery. Our life. — Jules Renard

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

There are no friends; only moments of friendship. — Jules Renard

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

To have a horror of the bourgeois is bourgeois. — Jules Renard

Words are the small change of thought. — Jules Renard

Failure is not the only punishment for laziness; there is also the success of others. — Jules Renard

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

Talent is a matter of quantity. Talent does not write on page, it writes three hundred. — Jules Renard

It is not how old you are, but how you are old. — Jules Renard

Writing is the best way to talk without being interrupted. — Jules Renard

Man who waits for roast duck to fly into mouth must wait very, very long time. — Jules Renard

Style means the right word. The rest matters little. — Jules Renard

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

Socialism must come down from the brain and reach the heart. — Jules Renard

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

It is more difficult to be an honorable man for a week than to be a hero for fifteen minutes. — Jules Renard

A beautiful line of verse has twelve feet, and two wings. — Jules Renard

There are moments when everything goes well; don't be frightened, it won't last. — Jules Renard

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

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

Truth makes many appeals, not the least of which is its power to shock. — Jules Renard

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. — Jules Renard

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

When the defects of others are perceived with so much clarity, it is because one possesses them oneself. — Jules Renard

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

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

I have a remarkable memory; I forget everything. It is wonderfully convenient. It is as though the world were constantly renewing itself for me. — Jules Renard

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

It is when we are faced with death that we turn most bookish. — Jules Renard

We are in the world to laugh. In purgatory or in hell we shall no longer be able to do so. And in heaven it would not be proper. — Jules Renard

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

Liberty is the right to choose. Freedom is the result of the right choice. — Jules Renard

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. — Jules Renard

Oh! Old rubbish! Old letters, old clothes, old objects that one does not want to throw away. How well nature has understood that, every year, she must change her leaves, her flowers, her fruit and her vegetables, and make manure out of the mementos of her year! — Jules Renard

True courage consists in being courageous precisely when when we're not. — Jules Renard

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. — Jules Renard

Laziness is nothing more than the habit of resting before you get tired. — Jules Renard

The bourgeois are other people. — Jules Renard

Clarity is the politeness of the man of letters. — Jules Renard

As I grow to understand life less and less,
I learn to love it more and more. — Jules Renard

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

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? — Jules Renard

Fame is a constant effort. — Jules Renard

To think is not enough, you must think of something. — Jules Renard

Talent is a question of quantity. Talent does not write one page; it writes three hundred. — Jules Renard

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

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

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

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. — Jules Renard

I finally know what distinguishes man from the other beasts: financial worries. — Jules Renard

We are so happy to advise others that occasionally we even do it in their interest. — Jules Renard

A cold in the head causes less suffering than an idea. — Jules Renard

Broken china lasts longer than unbroken. — Jules Renard

It's not how old you are, it's how you are old. — Jules Renard

On earth there is no heaven, but there are pieces of it. — Jules Renard

Being bored is an insult to oneself. — Jules Renard

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. — Jules Renard

Add two letters two paris and it's paradise. — Jules Renard

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

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

The less I understand life, the more I live it! — Jules Renard

The danger of success is that it makes us forget the world's dreadful injustice. — Jules Renard

God, he whom everyone knows, by name. — Jules Renard

Some people are so boring that they make you waste an entire day in five minutes. — Jules Renard

If money does not make you happy, give it back — Jules Renard

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

I don't know if God exists, but it would be better for His reputation if He didn't. — Jules Renard

The truly free man is the one who can turn down an invitation to dinner without giving an excuse. — Jules Renard

We are ignorant of the Beyond because this ignorance is the condition of our own life. Just as ice cannot know fire except by melting and vanishing. — Jules Renard

It is not enough to be happy, it is also necessary that others not be. — Jules Renard

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

He walked noisily, like a fish. — Jules Renard

Don't tell a woman she's pretty; tell her there's no other woman like her, and all roads will open to you — Jules Renard

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

We don't understand life any better at forty than at twenty, but we know it and admit it — Jules Renard

The peasant is the only species of human being who doesn't like the country and never looks at it. — Jules Renard

There are places and moments in which one is so completely alone that one sees the world entire. — Jules Renard

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

The ideal of calm exists in a sitting cat. — Jules Renard

Words are the coins making up the currency of sentences, and there are always too many small coins. — Jules Renard

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

Words should be only the clothes, carefully custom-made to fit the thought. — Jules Renard

Love is like an hourglass, with the heart filling up as the brain empties. — Jules Renard

If you are afraid of being lonely, don't try to be right. — Jules Renard

If I were to begin my life again, I should want it as it was. I would only open my eyes a little more. — Jules Renard

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. — Jules Renard

When I think of all the books still left for me to read, I am certain of further happiness. — Jules Renard

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