266 Quotes by Guy de Maupassant

What do you want?" he then asked her. And with clenched teeth, and trembling with anger, she replied: "I want--I want you to marry me, as you promised." But he only laughed and replied: "Oh! if a man were to marry all the girls with whom he has made a slip, he would have more than enough to do.

Mais, comme il éprouvait une peine infinie à découvrir des idées, il prit la spécialité des déclamations sur la décadence des moeurs sur l'abaissement des caractères, l'affaissement du patriotisme et l'anémie de l'honneur français. (Il avait trouvé le mot "anémie" dont il était fier.)

breathing, sleeping, drinking, eating, working, dreaming, everything we do is dying. to live, in fact, is to die.

Une vie! Quelques jours et puis plus rien! On naît, on grandit, on est heureux, on attend, puis on meurt.

The simplest of women are wonderful liars who can extricate themselves from the most difficult dilemmas with a skill bordering on genius.

Patriotism is a kind of religion; it is the egg from which wars are hatched.

The essence of life is the smile of round female bottoms, under the shadow of cosmic boredom.

It is the lives we encounter that make life worth living.

It is better to be unhappy in love than unhappy in marriage, but some people manage to be both.