Guy de Maupassant quotes

Guy de Maupassant was a French writer renowned for his mastery of the short story form. His works often explore human nature, social class, and the complexities of everyday life. He became one of the most influential writers of 19th-century France. Here are 63 of his quotes:

Our memory is a more perfect world than the universe: it gives back life to those who no longer exist. (Guy de Maupassant)
Every government has as much of a duty to avoid war as a ship's captain has to avoid a shipwreck. View quote
Guy de Maupassant
Patriotism is a kind of religion; it is the egg from which wars are hatched. View quote
Guy de Maupassant
A legal kiss is never as good as a stolen one. View quote
Guy de Maupassant
It is the lives we encounter that make life worth living. View quote
Guy de Maupassant
It is better to be unhappy in love than unhappy in marriage, but some people manage to be both. View quote
Guy de Maupassant
Great minds that are healthy are never considered geniuses, while this sublime qualification is lavished on brains that are often inferior but are slightly touched by madness. View quote
Guy de Maupassant
I entered literary life as a meteor, and I shall leave it like a thunderbolt. View quote
Guy de Maupassant
You have the army of mediocrities followed by the multitude of fools. As the mediocrities and the fools always form the immense majority, it is impossible for them to elect an intelligent government. View quote
Guy de Maupassant
The essence of life is the smile of round female bottoms, under the shadow of cosmic boredom. View quote
Guy de Maupassant
Love is always love, come whence it may. A heart that beats at your approach, an eye that weeps when you go away are things so rare, so sweet, so precious that they must never be despised. (Guy de Maupassant)
There is only one good thing in life, and that is love. View quote
Guy de Maupassant
There is only one good thing in life, and that is love. And how you misunderstand it! how you spoil it! You treat it as something solemn like a sacrament, or something to be bought, like a dress. View quote
Guy de Maupassant
Everything is false, everything is possible, everything is doubtful. View quote
Guy de Maupassant
The simplest of women are wonderful liars who can extricate themselves from the most difficult dilemmas with a skill bordering on genius. View quote
Guy de Maupassant
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. View quote
Guy de Maupassant
Legitimized love always despises its easygoing brother. View quote
Guy de Maupassant
Military men are the scourges of the world. View quote
Guy de Maupassant
We live always under the weight of the old and odious customs ... of our barbarous ancestors. View quote
Guy de Maupassant
A man forced to spend his life without ever having the right, without ever finding the time, to shut himself up all alone, no matter where, to think, to reflect, to work, to dream? Ah! my dear boy, a key, the key of a door which one can lock - this is happiness, mark you, the only happiness! View quote
Guy de Maupassant
I have come to the conclusion that the bed comprehends our whole life; for we were bom in it, we live in it, and we shall die in it. (Guy de Maupassant)
There are in France some fifty thousand young men of good birth and fairly well off who are encouraged to live a life of complete idleness. They must either cease to exist or must come to see that there can be no happiness, no health even, without regular daily labor of some sort ... The need of work is in me. View quote
Guy de Maupassant
You've never lived until you've almost died. For those who have fought for it, life has a flavor the protected shall never know. View quote
Guy de Maupassant
A sick thought can devour the body's flesh more than fever or consumption. View quote
Guy de Maupassant
...A strange art – music – the most poetic and precise of all the arts, vague as a dream and precise as algebra. View quote
Guy de Maupassant