Sidonie Gabrielle Colette Quotes & Sayings

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

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

Among all the modernized aspects of the most luxurious of industries, the model, a vestige of voluptuous barbarianism, is like some plunder-laden prey. She is the object of unbridled regard, a living bait, the passive realization of an ideal. No other female occupation contains such potent impulses to moral disintegration as this one, applying as it does the outward signs of riches to a poor and beautiful girl. — Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

Voluptuaries, consumed by their senses, always begin by flinging themselves with a great display of frenzy into an abyss. But they survive, they come to the surface again. And they develop a routine of the abyss: It's four o clock. At five I have my abyss ... — Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

There are connoisseurs of blue just as there are connoisseurs of wine. — Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

If we want to be sincere, we must admit that there is a well-nourished love and an ill-nourished love. And the rest is literature. — Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

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

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

A kindly gesture bestowed by us on an animal arouses prodigies of understanding and gratitude. — Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

You do not notice changes in what is always before you. — Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

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

The lovesick, the betrayed, and the jealous all smell alike. — Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

Is suffering so very serious? ... I'm referring to the kind of suffering a man inflicts on a woman or a woman on a man. It's extremely painful ... hardly bearable. But I very much fear that this sort of pain ... is no more worthy of respect than old age or illness. — Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

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. — Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

It is wise to apply the oil of refined politeness to the mechanism of friendship. — Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

Sincerity is not a spontaneous flower nor is modesty either. — Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

No temptation can ever be measured by the value of its object. — Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

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. — Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

By means of an image we are often able to hold on to our lost belongings. But it is the desperateness of losing which picks the flowers of memory, binds the bouquet. — Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

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

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

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

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

On the first of May, with my comrades of the catechism class, I laid lilac, chamomile and rose before the altar of the Virgin, and returned full of pride to show my blessed posy. My mother laughed her irreverent laugh and, looking at my bunch of flowers, which was bringing the may-bug into the sitting-room right under the lamp, she said: Do you suppose it wasn't already blessed before? — Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

The faults of husbands are often caused by the excess virtues of their wives. — Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

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. — Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

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

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. — Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

I've entered the world of wine without any professional training, but a definite appetite for good bottles. — Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

At sixty-three years of age, less a quarter, one still has plans. — Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

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. — Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

Never touch a butterfly's wing with your finger. — Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

Truffles must come to the table in their own stock and as you break open this jewel sprung from a poverty-stricken soil, imagine - if you have never visited it - the desolate kingdom where it rules. — Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

Researchers, with science as their authority, will be able to cut animals up, alive, into small pieces, drop them from a great height to see if they are shattered by the fall, or deprive them of sleep for sixteen days and nights continuously for the purposes of an iniquitous monograph ... Animal trust, undeserved faith, when at last will you turn away from us? Shall we never tire of deceiving, betraying, tormenting animals before they cease to trust us? — Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

The day after that wedding night I found that a distance of a thousand miles, abyss and discovery and irremediable metamorphosis, separated me from the day before. — Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

One keeps forgetting old age up to the very brink of the grave. — Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

A happy childhood is poor preparation for human contacts. — Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

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. — Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

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. — Sidonie Gabrielle Colette