Colette Quotes

125 Sourced Quotes

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

Colette
Poetry does not necessarily have to be beautiful to stick in the depths of our memory...

Colette
I love my past. I love my present. I'm not ashamed of what I've had, and I'm not sad because I have it no longer.

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

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

Colette
It is not a bad thing that children should occasionally, and politely, put parents in their place.

Colette
Sincerity is not a spontaneous flower, nor is modesty either.

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

Colette
My true friends have always given me that supreme proof of devotion, a spontaneous aversion for the man I loved.

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

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

Colette
Breathe in the pine and mint from the little salt marsh; its fragrance is scratching at the gate like a cat!

Colette
There is a certain melancholy in having to tell oneself that one has said good-bye — unless of course one is a grandmother — to the age and the circumstances that enable one to observe young children closely and passionately.

Colette
A bed, a nice fresh bed, with smoothly drawn sheets and a hot-water bottle at the end of it, soft to the feet like a live animal's tummy.

Colette
How pure are those who have never forced anything open!

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.

Colette
Adventures happen to people who, by their composure, their unshakableness, and their scorn of the unusual may be said to deserve them. They leave little or no trace.

Colette
Let's buy a pack of cards, good wine, bridge scores, knitting needles, all the paraphernalia needed to fill an enormous void, everything needed to hide that horror—the old woman.

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.

Colette
Instead of marrying 'at once,' it sometimes happens that we marry 'at last.'

Colette
To lift and penetrate and tear apart the soil is a labour — a pleasure — always accompanied by an exultation that no unprofitable exercise can ever provide.

Colette
But once I had set out, I was already far on my way.

Colette
One keeps forgetting old age up to the very brink of the grave.

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.

Colette
Ah, how much I like you, how well we get on, when you're asleep and I'm awake.

Colette
Sit down and 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.

Colette
I am a pear that has survived a hailstorm: when it does not rot, it becomes better and sweeter than the others, in spite of its little scars.

Colette
The tomcat is behaving consistently. On arrival, he struck his forehead and cried 'But of course! This is where I climb up a mulberry tree and sing at the top of my voice and then do battle with a white cat!'

Colette
A wild beast has no need to leap in order to promote fear.

Colette
Kiki-The-Demure: Once when I was little She tried to give me castor oil. I scratched and bit her so, she never tried again. Ha! She must have thought she held the devil between her knees. I squirmed, blew fire through my nostrils, multiplied my twenty claws by a hundred, my teeth by one thousand, and finally — disappeared as if by magic.
Toby-Dog: I wouldn't dare do that. You see, I love her. I love her enough to forgive her even the torture of the bath.

Colette