Guy de Maupassant Quotes

I took the book from him reverently, and I gazed at these forms incomprehensible to me, but which revealed the immortal thoughts of the greatest shatterer of dreams who had ever dwelt on earth.

Madeleine in her turn stared at him steadily, straight into his eyes, in a profound, strange way, as if seeking to read something there, as if seeking to discover there that hidden part of a human being which can never be fathomed but may perhaps be glimpsed for a fleeting instant, in those moments of unguardedness or surrender or inattention, that are like doors left ajar onto the mysterious depths of the spirit... they stood for a few seconds, each gazing into the other's eyes, each striving to reach the impenetrable secret of the other's heart, to probe each other's thoughts to the quick. They tried, in a mute and passionate questioning, to see the other's conscience in its essential truth: the intimate struggles of two beings who, living side by side, never really know one another, who suspect and sniff around and spy on one another, but cannot plumb the miry depths of one another's soul.

It is the lives we encounter that make life worth living.

He was one of those many-faced politicians without any strong beliefs, with no great resources, no backbone and no real knowledge of anything, a country lawyer with provincial good looks, craftily walking the tight-rope between any extremist parties, a kind of republican Jesuit, a sort of dubious little mushroom such as flourish in their hundreds on the popular dunghill of universal suffrage.

Since governments take the right of death over their people, it is not astonishing if the people should sometimes take the right of death over governments.

Le mariage pour moi n'est pas une chaîne, mais une association. J'entends être libre, tout à fait libre de mes actes, de mes démarches, de mes sorties, toujours. Je ne pourrais tolérer ni contrôle, ni jalousie, ni discussion sur ma conduite. Je m'engagerais, bien entendu, à ne jamais compromettre le nom de l'homme que j'aurais épousé, à ne jamais le rendre odieux ou ridicule. Mais il faudrait aussi que cet homme s'engageât à voir en moi une égale, une alliée, et non pas une inférieure ni une épouse obéissante et soumise. Mes idées, je le sais, ne sont pas celles de tout le monde, mais je n'en changerai point. Voilà.

breathing, sleeping, drinking, eating, working, dreaming, everything we do is dying. to live, in fact, is to die.

Killing is decreed by law but nature loves eternal youth. Whatever she does, however unconscious and unfeeling the act, she seems to cry out: ‘Quick! Quick! Quick!’ And the more she destroys, the more she is renewed.

What would have happened if she had not lost that necklace? Who knows? who knows? How strange and changeful is life! How small a thing is needed to make or ruin us!

I reason everything out, and usually analyze my tastes too well to succumb to them blindly. And that's my chief defect, the real cause of my weakness. But this woman has taken possession of me in spite of myself, in spite of my fear and my knowledge of her; and she possesses me as if she had plucked out, one after the other, my every last aspiration.

There are some delightful places in this world which have a sensual charm for the eyes. One loves them with a physical love. We people who are attracted by the countryside cherish fond memories of certain springs, certain woods, certain ponds, certain hills, which have become familiar sights and can touch our hearts like happy events.
Sometimes indeed the memory goes back towards a forest glade, or a spot on a river bank or an orchard in blossom, glimpsed only once on a happy day, but preserved in our heart.

The past attracts me, the present frightens me, because the future is death.

Any government has as much of a duty to avoid war as a ship's captain has to avoid a shipwreck.

They had moved closer to one another to watch the dying moments of the day, this beautiful bright May day.

Никоя подарена целувка не струва толкова колкото открадната