French Author Quotes

For I think that it's just as much good sense, if one can keep to the point, as to twist my words round each other.

A friendship that can be ended / didn't ever start

Women live only in the emotion that love gives. An old lady confessed that she had loved much, when young: "Ah!" she exclaimed, "the exquisite pain of those days!"

Arsène Houssaye
Arsène Houssaye
Abstract art: a construction site for high fashion, for advertising, for furniture.

With my teeth
I have seized life
Upon the knife of my youth.
With my lips today,
With my lips alone…

René Char
René Char
Say, boys! if you give me just another whiskey I'll be glad, And I'll draw right here a picture of the face that drove me mad. Give me that piece of chalk with which you mark the baseball score, You shall see the lovely Madeleine upon the bar-room floor.

Friendship is dead:
They were friends who go with the wind,
And the wind was blowing at my door.

Don't forget that I cannot see myself, that my role is limited to being the one who looks in the mirror.

I am dying of thirst by the side of the fountain.

Charles, Duke of Orléans
Charles, Duke of Orléans
Driven away by barbarian thrumming the Muse has spurned the six-footed exercise ever since she beheld these patrons seven feet high.

Sidonius Apollinaris
Sidonius Apollinaris
This is not love, such has only its name and semblance, which loves no thing unless it gains from it.

My imagination gave me infinite delight. In recovering what men call reason, do I have to regret the loss of these joys?

Gérard de Nerval
Gérard de Nerval
And also there's a little star
So white a virgin's it must be:—
Perhaps the lamp my love in heaven
Hangs out to light the way for me.

Here is wisdom: to love wine, beauty and the divine Spring. That is enough, the rest is worthless.

I have so fiercely dreamed of you And walked so far and spoken of you so, Loved a shade of you so hard That now I've no more left of you.

The good effect of Fortune may be short-lived. To build on it is to build on sand.

I am God, says Love, for Love is God and God is Love, and this Soul is God by the condition of Love. I am God by divine nature and this Soul is God by the condition of Love. Thus this precious beloved of mine is taught and guided by me, without herself, for she is transformed into me, and such a perfect one, says Love, takes my nourishment.

Ah, the whites! Their malignity and their omniscience—that was what made them terrifying!

Poetry is the vision in a man's soul which he translates as best he can with all the means at his disposal.

Paul Fort
Paul Fort
The light died out and left the sky,
We sighed and rose and said good-bye,
We had forgotten — He and I,
That he was dead, that I must die.

I am Arnaut who love the wind,
And chase the hare with the ox,
And swim against the torrent.

In life's orchestra, the bike is the double bass. Hard to forget it

Love's pleasure lasts but a moment;
Love's sorrow lasts all through life.

There is only one proper way to wear a beautiful dress: to forget you are wearing it.

Harvest, oh! harvest your hour While life is abloom with youth! For age with bitter ruth Will fade your beauty's flower.

Pierre de Ronsard
Pierre de Ronsard