Sidonie Gabrielle Colette
Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

Be happy. It's one way of being wise.

Sidonie Gabrielle Colette
Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

What a wonderful life I've had! I only wish I'd realized it sooner.

Sidonie Gabrielle Colette
Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

Never touch a butterfly's wing with your finger.

Sidonie Gabrielle Colette
Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

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.

Sidonie Gabrielle Colette
Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

There are days when solitude 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 Colette
Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

A woman who thinks she is intelligent demands the same rights as man. An intelligent woman gives up.

Sidonie Gabrielle Colette
Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

A happy childhood is poor preparation for human contacts.

Sidonie Gabrielle Colette
Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

The lovesick, the betrayed, and the jealous all smell alike.

Sidonie Gabrielle Colette
Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

I 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 Colette
Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

It is wise to apply the oil of refined politeness to the mechanism of friendship.

Sidonie Gabrielle Colette
Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

January, month of empty pockets! let us endure this evil month, anxious as a theatrical producer's forehead.

Sidonie Gabrielle Colette
Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

Sit down and put down everything that comes into your head and then you're a writer. But an author is one who can judge his own stuff's worth, without pity, and destroy most of it.

Sidonie Gabrielle Colette
Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

Sincerity is not a spontaneous flower nor is modesty either.

Sidonie Gabrielle Colette
Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

Writing only leads to more writing.

Sidonie Gabrielle Colette
Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

You must not pity me because my sixtieth year finds me still astonished. To be astonished is one of the surest ways of not growing old too quickly.

Sidonie Gabrielle Colette
Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

I believe there are more urgent and honorable occupations than the incomparable waste of time we call suffering.

Sidonie Gabrielle Colette
Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

On 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 Colette
Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

No temptation can ever be measured by the value of its object.

Sidonie Gabrielle Colette
Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

Jealousy is not at all low, but it catches us humbled and bowed down, at first sight.

Sidonie Gabrielle Colette
Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

A pretty little collection of weaknesses and a terror of spiders are our indispensable stock-in-trade with the men.