86+ Sidonie Gabrielle Colette Quotes On Death, Identity And And Marriage

Sidonie Gabrielle Colette was a French novelist, best known for her novel Gigi. She was a prolific author who wrote over 50 books, including novels, short stories, plays, and journalism. She wrote about the female experience and was a major figure in the French literary world during the early 20th century. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Sidonie Gabrielle Colette on love, death, life.

Top 10 Sidonie Gabrielle Colette Quotes

1. 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.
2. It is not a bad thing that children should occasionally, and politely, put parents in their place.
3. When she raises her eyelids it's as if she were taking off all her clothes.
4. Be happy. It's one way of being wise.
5. Our perfect companions never have fewer than four feet.
6. You will do foolish things, but do them with enthusiasm.
7. I believe there are more urgent and honorable occupations than the incomparable waste of time we call suffering.
8. Time spent with a cat is never wasted.
9. 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.
10. What a wonderful life I've had! I only wish I'd realized it sooner.

Sidonie Gabrielle Colette Short Quotes

• Never touch a butterfly's wing with your finger.
• A kindly gesture bestowed by us on an animal arouses prodigies of understanding and gratitude.
• There are connoisseurs of blue just as there are connoisseurs of wine.
• Look for a long time at what pleases you, and a longer time at what pains you.
• Sincerity is not a spontaneous flower nor is modesty either.
• There are no ordinary cats.
• One keeps forgetting old age up to the very brink of the grave.
• beautiful December grapes, blue as plums, every grape a little skinful of sweet, tasteless water
• The lovesick, the betrayed, and the jealous all smell alike.
• Writing only leads to more writing.

Sidonie Gabrielle Colette Quotes About Love

It's so curious: one can resist tears and 'behave' very well in the hardest hours of grief. But then someone makes you a friendly sign behind a window, or one notices that a flower that was in bud only yesterday has suddenly blossomed, or a letter slips from a drawer... and everything collapses. — 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

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

That lovely voice; how I should weep for joy if I could hear it now! — Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

I want nothing from love, in short, but love. — Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

Sidonie Gabrielle Colette Quotes About True

It takes time for the absent to assume their true shape in our thoughts. — 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

It takes time for the absent to assume their true shape in our thoughts. After death they take on a firmer outline and then cease to change. — Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

Sidonie Gabrielle Colette Famous Quotes And Sayings

- and how time flies! What, has it already been twenty years, already forty years that we are together? Why, how terrible! We haven't yet said all we wanted to say to each other... May we have a little respite, or else may we be allowed to begin all over again! — Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

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

The woman who thinks she is intelligent demands equal rights with men. A woman who is intelligent does not. — Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

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

To write is to pour one’s innermost self passionately upon the tempting paper, at such frantic speed that sometimes one’s hand struggles and rebels, overdriven by the impatient god which guides it - and to find, next day, in place of the golden bough that bloomed miraculously in that dazzling hour, a withered bramble and a stunted flower. — 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

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

Total absence of humor renders life impossible. — Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

To a poet, silence is an acceptable response, even a flattering one. — Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

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

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

Jealousy is not at all low, but it catches us humbled and bowed down, at first sight. — Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

If he's getting married, he's not longer interesting. — Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

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

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

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

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

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

At the top of the iron staircase leading to the stage, the good, dry, dusty warmth wraps me round like a comfortable dirty cloak. — Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

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. — Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

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

And what a delight it is to make friends with someone you have despised. — 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 writer who loses his self-doubt, who gives way as he grows old to a sudden euphoria, to prolixity, should stop writing immediately: the time has come for him to lay aside his pen. — 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

A few days later, I found my mother beneath the tree, motionless with excitement, her head turned toward the heavens in which she would allow human religions no place. — Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

If I can't have too many truffles, I'll do without truffles. — Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

We only do well the things we like doing. — Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

But what is the heart, madame? It's worth less than people think. it's quite accommodating, it accepts anything. You give it whatever you have, it's not very particular. But the body... Ha! That's something else again! It has a cultivated taste, as they say, it knows what it wants. A heart doesn't choose, and one always ends up by loving. — Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

I went to collect the few personal belongings which...I held to be invaluable: my cat, my resolve to travel, and my solitude. — Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

Shall we never have done with that cliche, so stupid that it could only be human, about the sympathy of animals for man when he is unhappy? Animals love happiness almost as much as we do. A fit of crying disturbs them, they'll sometimes imitate sobbing, and for a moment they'll reflect our sadness. But they flee unhappiness as they flee fever, and I believe that in the long run they are capable of boycotting it. — Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

Hope costs nothing. — 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

Is suffering so very serious? I have come to doubt it. It may be quite childish, a sort of undignified pastime -- I'm referring to the kind of suffering a man inflicts on a woman or a woman on a man. It's extremely painful. I agree that it's hardly bearable. But I very much fear that this sort of pain deserves no consideration at all. It's no more worthy of respect than old age or illness. — Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

So now, whenever I despair, I no longer expect my end, but some bit of luck, some commonplace little miracle which, like a glittering link, will mend again the necklace of my days. — Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

Books, books, books. It was not that I read so much. I read and re-read the same ones. But all of them were necessary to me. Their presence, their smell, the letters of their titles, and the texture of their leather bindings. — Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

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

Girls usually have a paper mâché face on their wedding day. — Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

Don't cudgel your brains over my little problems. — Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

The only virtue on which I pride myself is my self-doubt; when a writer loses her self-doubt, the time has come to lay aside her pen. — Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

You don't think before you do something foolish. You do your thinking afterwards. — Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

But just as delicate fare does not stop you from craving for saveloys, so tried and exquisite friendship does not take away your taste for something new and dubious. — Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

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

I have found my voice again and the art of using it. — 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

The word 'pure' has never revealed an intelligent meaning to me. I can only use the word to quench an optical thirst for purity in the transparencies that evoke it - in bubbles, in a volume of water, and in the imaginary latitudes entrenched, beyond reach, at the very center of a dense crystal. — Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

Can it be that chance has made me one of those women so immersed in one man that, whether they are barren or not, they carry with them to the grave the shriveled innocence of an old maid? — 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

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 did not look for her, because I was afraid of dispelling the mystery we attach to people whom we know only casually. — 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

No one asked you to be happy. Get to work. — Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

Life Lessons by Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

1. Sidonie Gabrielle Colette taught us to be resilient and to keep pushing forward despite life's challenges. She recognized that life is full of ups and downs, and she embraced them both.
2. She also taught us to be independent and to never give up our own identity. She was a strong advocate for women's rights and encouraged others to stand up for themselves.
3. Lastly, she taught us to live life to the fullest and to make the most of every moment. She was passionate about her work and was always looking for new ways to express her creativity.