It is wise to apply the oil of refined politeness to the mechanisms of friendship.
SIDONIE GABRIELLE COLETTEIt is wise to apply the oil of refined politeness to the mechanisms of friendship.
SIDONIE GABRIELLE COLETTEYou do not notice changes in what is always before you.
SIDONIE GABRIELLE COLETTEThere 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.
SIDONIE GABRIELLE COLETTEJanuary, month of empty pockets! let us endure this evil month, anxious as a theatrical producer’s forehead.
SIDONIE GABRIELLE COLETTEBe happy. It’s one way of being wise.
SIDONIE GABRIELLE COLETTEOn this narrow planet, we have only the choice between two unknown worlds. One of them tempts us – ah! what a dream, to live in that! – the other stifles us at the first breath.
SIDONIE GABRIELLE COLETTEI am going away with him to an unknown country where I shall have no past and no name, and where I shall be born again with a new face and an untried heart.
SIDONIE GABRIELLE COLETTEThere are no ordinary cats.
SIDONIE GABRIELLE COLETTEI 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.
SIDONIE GABRIELLE COLETTELook for a long time at what pleases you, and a longer time at what pains you.
SIDONIE GABRIELLE COLETTETo a poet, silence is an acceptable response, even a flattering one.
SIDONIE GABRIELLE COLETTEBy an image we hold on to our lost treasures, but it is the wrenching loss that forms the image, composes, binds the bouquet.
SIDONIE GABRIELLE COLETTEThe day after that wedding night I found that a distance of a thousand miles, abyss and discovery and irremediable metamorphosis, separated me from the day before.
SIDONIE GABRIELLE COLETTEAt sixty-three years of age, less a quarter, one still has plans.
SIDONIE GABRIELLE COLETTEIt takes time for the absent to assume their true shape in our thoughts.
SIDONIE GABRIELLE COLETTEHope costs nothing.
SIDONIE GABRIELLE COLETTE