81 Quotes by Colette

My son, be rich and live your own life! Tell yourself that you’re the incarnation of an ancient aristocracy. Model yourself on the feudal barons. You’re a warrior.

Does she deliberately make herself ugly out of modesty or pride?” Brice wondered, watching his wife walk pigeon-toed, run into the corner of the table, and rub her thigh. “It’s a kind of lie, too.

Incompatibility became established between them like a new season of the year.

I put on a martyred expression – like this – as if I was bored to death with every luxury under the sun. I had the time of my life.

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

Tout m’est egalement odieux.

To write sincerely, almost sincerely! I hope it may bring me relief, that sort of interior silence which follows a sudden utterance, a confession.

It is absurd to suppose that periods empty of love are blank pages in a woman’s life. The truth is just the reverse. What remains to be said about a passionate love affair? It can be told in three lines. He loved me, I loved Him. His presence obliterated all other presences. We were happy. Then He stopped loving me and I suffered.

It wasn’t only a little she-cat I bought. It was the nobility of all cats, their infinite disinterestedness, their knowledge of how to live, their affinities with the highest type of humans.