Colette Quotes

125 Sourced Quotes

I am just over an attack of grippe-bronchitis, very unpleasant at my ages (I have two or three).

Colette
I look like a discouraged beetle battered by the rains of a spring night. I look like a moulting bird. I look like a governess in distress. I look — Good Lord, I look like an actress on tour, and that speaks for itself.

Colette
Her childhood, then her adolescence, had taught her patience, hope, silence and the easy manipulation of the weapons and virtues of all prisoners.

Colette
A kindly gesture bestowed by us on an animal arouses prodigies of understanding and gratitude.

Colette
Confronted with a film, the child hardly thinks at all... faced with some confused activity where human movement has pride of place. The beating of the heart, the to-and-fro of the eyes, supplant thought while the screen is showing the hero pursued by kidnappers or murderers and revolver shots explode in wads of cotton-wool.

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.

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
Can it be that chance has made me one of those women so immersed in one man that, whether they are barren or not, they carry with them to the grave the shrivelled innocence of an old maid?

Colette
Neither knowledge nor diligence can create a great chef. Of what use is conscientiousness as a substitute for inspiration?

Colette
The seduction emanating from a person of uncertain or dissimulated sex is powerful.

Colette
The more the wonders of the world become inaccessible, the more intensely do its curiosities affect us.

Colette
You remind me of people who bring along a little box of cakes and leave it in the hall, saying to themselves: 'There'll be plenty of time to produce these later,' and then pick them up again when they go.

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
The three great stumbling blocks in a girl's education... homard a l'Américaine, a boiled egg, and asparagus.

Colette
It is, alas, only the first forgiveness which is difficult.

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
A poet perceives and gives whole-hearted expression to that which our sensibilities, not less lively but less musicianly, keep stored inside.

Colette
The power of sonorous language is great, it goes to the gates of death.

Colette
On this narrow planet, we have only the choice between two unknown worlds. One of them tempts us — ah! what a dream, to live in that! — the other stifles us at the first breath.

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
When, like me, one has nothing in oneself one hopes for everything from another.

Colette
To be astonished is one of the surest ways of not growing old too quickly.

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

Colette
One always writes for someone. Rarely for several people. Never for everyone.

Colette
When one loves in a certain way, even betrayals become unimportant.

Colette