Colette Quotes

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.

We only do well the things we like doing.

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?

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

If one wished to be perfectly sincere, one would have to admit there are two kinds of love—well-fed and ill-fed. The rest is pure fiction.

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.

The world of the emotions that we so lightly call physical.

Le monde des èmotions qu’on nomme, á la lègére, physiques.

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

Let’s go out and buy playing-cards, good wine, bridge-scorers, knitting needles—all the paraphernalia to fill a gaping void, all that’s required to disguise that monster, an old woman.

Life as a child and then as a girl had taught her patience, hope, silence; and given her a prisoner's proficiency in handling these virtues as weapons.

Nothing ages a woman like living in the country.

There are days when solitude, for someone my age, is a heady wine that intoxicates you with freedom, others when it is a bitter tonic, and still others when it is a poison that makes you beat your head against the wall.

When she raises her eyelids it's as if she were taking off all her clothes.

Hay que envejecer terriblemente para renunciar a la vanidad de vivir ante alguien