George Sand Quotes

147 Sourced Quotes

Nothing resembles selfishness more closely than self-respect.

George Sand
Death must no longer be either the penalty for prosperity or the consolation of misery. God did not destine it to be either the punishment or the compensation for life.

George Sand
Revolutions... have put one half of France in mourning for the other.

George Sand
I needn't tell you that success and failure prove nothing — the whole thing is a lottery. It's pleasant to succeed; but for a philosophic mind it oughtn't to be very upsetting to fail.

George Sand
There is among men such intense affectation that they often boast of defects which they have not, more willingly than of qualities which they have.

George Sand
Heavens! whatever possesses us, here below, that we mutually torment ourselves, sourly reproach our mutual faults, and mercilessly condemn all that is not cut according to our pattern?

George Sand
Love is too delicate a flower to rise again when one has trampled it under foot.

George Sand
Ah! that Senate is a world of ice and darkness! It votes the destruction of peoples as the simplest and wisest thing; for its members themselves are moribund.

George Sand
A child motivated by competitive ideals will grow into a man without conscience, shame, or true dignity.

George Sand
It is always the best friends who are neglected and ignored.

George Sand
The gift of Chopin is [the expression of] the deepest and fullest feelings and emotions that have ever existed. He made a single instrument speak a language of infinity. He could often sum up, in ten lines that a child could play, poems of a boundless exaltation, dramas of unequalled power.

George Sand
You see what stupid folk my publishers are; but they are all alike.

George Sand
God abandons only those who abandon themselves, and whoever has the courage to shut up his sorrow within his own heart is stronger to fight against it than he who complains.

George Sand
Life is a long ache which rarely sleeps and can never be cured.

George Sand
I have a horror of vanity; it is the quicksand of reason.

George Sand
Let us accept truth, even when it surprises us and alters our views.

George Sand
The publication of a book only brings very paltry results to its author.

George Sand
The human soul is hospitable, and will entertain conflicting sentiments and contradictory opinions with much impartiality.

George Sand
I have no enthusiasm for nature which the slightest chill will not instantly destroy.

George Sand
I know that I am a slave, and you are my lord. The law of this country has made you my master. You can bind my body, tie my hands, govern my actions: you are the strongest, and society adds to your power, but with my will, sir, you can do nothing.

George Sand
Masterpieces are only lucky attempts.

George Sand
Time is always wanting to me, and I cannot meet with a single day when I am not hurried along, driven to my wits'-end by urgent work, business to attend to, or some service to render.

George Sand
No one makes a revolution by himself; and there are some revolutions which humanity accomplishes without quite knowing how, because it is everybody who takes them in hand.

George Sand
That small newspaper goes in both for opposition and defamation. The great point is not to take the one for the other.

George Sand
Life is arid and terrible; repose is a chimera; prudence useless; reason itself serves only to dry up the heart. There is but one virtue — the eternal sacrifice of self.

George Sand
The life of great geniuses is nothing but a sublime storm.

George Sand
God has written in the law of nature that when two people are joined in love or friendship, one must always give his heart more perfectly than the other.

George Sand
A woman can not guarantee her heart, even though her husband be the greatest and most perfect of men.

George Sand
Obstacles usually stimulate passion, but sometimes they kill it.

George Sand
It is sad, no doubt, to exhaust one's strength and one's days in cleaving the bosom of this jealous earth, which compels us to wring from it the treasures of its fertility, when a bit of the blackest and coarsest bread is, at the end of the day's work, the sole recompense and the sole profit attaching to so arduous a toil.

George Sand