Colette quotes - page 2

Our perfect companions never have fewer than four feet. (Colette)
A woman who thinks she is intelligent demands the same rights as man. An intelligent woman gives up. View quote
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. View quote
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. View quote
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. View quote
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.”. View quote
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. View quote
Colette
The lovesick, the betrayed, and the jealous all smell alike. View quote
Colette
Hope costs nothing. View quote
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. View quote
Colette
A happy childhood is poor preparation for human contacts. (Colette)
A pretty little collection of weaknesses and a terror of spiders are our indispensable stock-in-trade with the men... nine men out of ten are superstitious, nineteen out of twenty believe in the evil eye, and ninety-eight out of a hundred are afraid of spiders. They forgive us - oh! for many things, but not for the absence in us of their own feelings. View quote
Colette
I went to collect the few personal belongings which... I held to be invaluable: my cat, my resolve to travel, and my solitude. View quote
Colette
There are no ordinary cats. View quote
Colette
No one asked you to be happy. Get to work. View quote
Colette
I did not look for her, because I was afraid of dispelling the mystery we attach to people whom we know only casually. View quote
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. View quote
Colette
I have found my voice again and the art of using it... View quote
Colette
It's nothing to be born ugly. Sensibly, the ugly woman comes to terms with her ugliness and exploits it as a grace of nature. To become ugly means the beginning of a calamity, self-willed most of the time. View quote
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. View quote
Colette
Whether you are dealing with an animal or a child, to convince is to weaken. (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. View quote
Colette
Don't ever wear artistic jewellry; it wrecks a woman's reputation. View quote
Colette
Humility has its origin in an awareness of unworthiness, and sometimes too in a dazzled awareness of saintliness. View quote
Colette
For to dream and then to return to reality only means that our qualms suffer a change of place and significance. View quote
Colette