Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotes by Colette (French Novelist, Performer)

Colette (1873–1954,) fully Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette, also Colette Willy, was a French writer who produced some of the most memorable female characters in literature. She was a novelist, short-story writer, journalist, essayist, memoirist, actress, and music-hall performer. Her best novels, mainly concerned with feminine independence in experiencing the joys and sorrows of love, are extraordinary for their command of sensual description.

Born in Saint-Sauveur-en-Puisaye, Burgundy, Colette ghost-wrote her early novels, including the first four Claudine novels (Claudine à l’école (1900,) Claudine à Paris (1901,) Claudine en ménage (1902,) and Claudine s’en va (1903,)) using her first husband’s pseudonym, Willy. From 1904 (the end of their association) to 1916 she wrote under the name ‘Colette Willy.’

In 1906, Colette appeared in music halls in dance and mime, and out of this period came La Vagabonde (1910; The Vagabond, 1955) and L’Envers du Music-hall (1913; Music-Hall Sidelights, 1957.) She also became the mistress of the actress Mathilde “Missy” de Morny—Colette wrote Les Vrilles de la vigne (1908; Tendrils of the Vine) about her affair with Missy.

Colette is one of the most prolific literary geniuses of the modern era and is recognized as one of the great stylists of the French language. Her utmost strength as a writer is an exact sensory evocation of sounds, smells, tastes, textures, and colors of her world. Her most famous novels include Chéri (1920,) La Fin de Chéri (1926; The Last of Chéri, 1932,) la Chatte (1933; The Cat, 1936) and Gigi (1944.)

Colette is the subject of numerous biographies, songs, and films, including the biopic Colette (2018) starring Keira Knightley.

More: Wikipedia READ: Works by Colette

Youth is not the age to seduce, it’s the age to be seduced.
Colette

In the matter of furnishing, I find a certain absence of ugliness far worse than ugliness.
Colette
Topics: Home

There is nothing that gives more assurance than a mask.
Colette

Music is love in search of a word.
Colette
Topics: Music, One liners

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… “
Colette
Topics: Despair

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

Don’t ever wear artistic jewelry; it wrecks a woman’s reputation.
Colette

Jealousy is not at all low, but it catches us humbled and bowed down, at first sight. For it is the only suffering that we endure without ever becoming used to it.
Colette
Topics: Jealousy

One keeps forgetting old age up to the very brink of the grave.
Colette
Topics: Age, Aging

Shall we never have done with that cliche, so stupid that it could only be human, about the sympathy of animals for man when he is unhappy? Animals love happiness almost as much as we do. A fit of crying disturbs them, they’ll sometimes imitate sobbing, and for a moment they’ll reflect our sadness. But they flee unhappiness as they flee fever, and I believe that in the long run they are capable of boycotting it.
Colette
Topics: Animals

As for an authentic villain, the real thing, the absolute, the artist, one rarely meets him even once in a lifetime. The ordinary bad hat is always in part a decent fellow.
Colette
Topics: Crime

A happy childhood is poor preparation for human contacts.
Colette
Topics: Experience, Childhood

Is suffering so very serious?. I have come to doubt it. It may be quite childish, a sort of undignified pastime—I’m referring to the kind of suffering a man inflicts on a woman or a woman on a man. It’s extremely painful. I agree that it’s hardly bearable. But I very much fear that this sort of pain deserves no consideration at all. It’s no more worthy of respect than old age or illness.
Colette
Topics: Suffering

The woman who thinks she is intelligent demands equal rights with men. A woman who is intelligent does not.
Colette
Topics: Intellectuals, Intelligence

The true traveler is he who goes on foot, and even then, he sits down a lot of the time.
Colette
Topics: Travel

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

I love my past, I love my present. I am not ashamed of what I have had, and I am not sad because I no longer have it.
Colette
Topics: The Past, Past

What a wonderful life I’ve had! I only wish I’d realized it sooner.
Colette
Topics: Happiness, Life, Living, Blessings

Girls usually have a paper mache face on their wedding day.
Colette
Topics: Weddings, Marriage

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 shriveled innocence of an old maid?
Colette

It was on that road and at that hour that I first became aware of my own self, experienced an inexpressible state of grace, and felt one with the first breath of air that stirred, the first bird, and the sun so newly born that it still looked not quite round.
Colette
Topics: Beginnings

January, month of empty pockets! Let us endure this evil month, anxious as a theatrical producer’s forehead.
Colette
Topics: Winter, Seasons

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.
Colette
Topics: Appearance

Among all the modernized aspects of the most luxurious of industries, the model, a vestige of voluptuous barbarianism, is like some plunder-laden prey. She is the object of unbridled regard, a living bait, the passive realization of an ideal. No other female occupation contains such potent impulses to moral disintegration as this one, applying as it does the outward signs of riches to a poor and beautiful girl.
Colette
Topics: Fashion

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.
Colette
Topics: Absence

For to dream and then to return to reality only means that our qualms suffer a change of place and significance
Colette
Topics: Dreams, Reality

There is no need to waste pity on young girls who are having their moments of disillusionment, for in another moment they will recover their illusion.
Colette
Topics: Girls, Children

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
Topics: Writing, Authors & Writing, Writers

We only do well the things we like doing.
Colette
Topics: Enjoyment, Aptness, Appropriateness, Success

There are no ordinary cats.
Colette
Topics: Cats

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