Best 15 quotes of Colette on MyQuotes

By associating with the cat, one only risks becoming richer.

It is only in pain that a woman is capable of rising above mediocrity. Her resistance to pain is infinite; one can use and abuse it without any fear that she will die, as long as some childish physical cowardice or some religious hope keeps her from the suicide that offers her a way out.

It was fun to see him becoming sententious again, glorying in a science he had invented, and as positive as a village soothsayer. 'So one should neither give nor receive?' I laughed. 'And if the lover is poor, his mistress indigent, then both she and he must tactfully let themselves and each other die?' 'Let them die,' he repeated. I had accompanied him as far as the revolving glass door of the lobby. 'Let them die,' he said again. 'It's less dangerous. I can swear on my word of honor that I never gave a present or made a loan or an exchange of anything except . . . this . . .' He waved both hands in a complicated gesture which fleetingly indicated his chest, his mouth, his genitals, his thighs. Thanks no doubt to my fatigue, I was reminded of an animal standing on its hind legs and unwinding the invisible. Then he resumed his strictly human significance, opened the door, and easily mingled with the night outside, where the sea was already a little paler than the sky.

look for a long time at what pleases you, and longer still at what pains you...

Mothers sound so stupid when they praise their daughters to the skies.

My true friends always gave me this supreme proof of attachment: a spontaneous aversion to the men I loved.

Niczego mi w zyciu nie braklo, ani urody, ani szczescia, ani nieszczescia; ani mezczyzn, ani kobiet...to dopiero mozna nazwac zyciem!

No one asked you to be happy. Get to work.

Oh! To rationalize oneself into matrimony...Oh! To decide something so grave in life 'after mature consideration'! Choose the color of a dress after a thousand hesitations, but for God's sake, get married without reflecting on it! That's the grace I wish I wish for you. May you even be so distracted that day that you walk past the registry office without remembering to stop there.

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." (Casual Chance, 1964)

...She (her mother) noticed that I was prettier than I was at home. Thus do girls change color in the warmth of masculine desire, whether they are fifteen or thirty.

She’s a very mysterious creature, with an open smile and a closed soul.

The more sensitive the lunatic, the less able is he to resist this prying interest of the normal human being. I felt that Renée's change of key - to myself, I compared Renée to a sweet melody, a little flat despite its laborious harmonies - was approaching.

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.

Trudno zadowolić jednocześnie wszystkich i samą siebie. Wolę zacząć od siebie...