Guy de Maupassant quotes - page 2

The count uttered several rather risky witticisms, but so tactfully were they said that his audience could not help smiling. Loiseau in turn made some considerably broader jokes, but no one took offence; and the thought expressed with such brutal directness by his wife was uppermost in the minds of all: "Since it's the girl's trade, why should she refuse this man more than another?" (Guy de Maupassant)
Let us protest and let us be angry, let us be indignant, or let us be enthusiastic, Schopenhauer has marked humanity with the seal of his disdain and of his disenchantment. A disabused pleasure-seeker, he overthrew beliefs, hopes, poetic ideals and chimeras, destroyed the aspirations, ravaged the confidence of souls, killed love, dragged down the chivalrous worship of women, crushed the illusions of hearts, and accomplished the most gigantic task ever attempted by scepticism. He spared nothing with his mocking spirit, and exhausted everything. And even to-day those who execrate him seem to carry in their own souls particles of his thought. View quote
Guy de Maupassant
The past attracts me, the present frightens me, because the future is death. View quote
Guy de Maupassant
Words dazzle and deceive because they are mimed by the face. But black words on a white page are the soul laid bare. View quote
Guy de Maupassant
Life is a slope. As long as you're going up you're always looking towards the top and you feel happy, but when you reach it, suddenly you can see the road going downhill and death at the end of it all. It's slow going up and quick going down. View quote
Guy de Maupassant
breathing, sleeping, drinking, eating, working, dreaming, everything we do is dying. to live, in fact, is to die. View quote
Guy de Maupassant
If I could, I would stop the passage of time. But hour follows on hour, minute on minute, each second robbing me of a morsel of myself for the nothing of tomorrow. I shall never experience this moment again. View quote
Guy de Maupassant
The kiss itself is immortal. It travels from lip to lip, century to century, from age to age. Men and women garner these kisses, offer them to others and then die in turn. View quote
Guy de Maupassant
And taking her friend's hand, she put it on her breast, on that firm round covering of a woman's heart which the male often finds so satisfying that he makes no attempt to find what lies beneath it. View quote
Guy de Maupassant
I have coveted everything and taken pleasure in nothing. View quote
Guy de Maupassant
Conversation. What is it? A Mystery! It's the art of never seeming bored, of touching everything with interest, of pleasing with trifles, of being fascinating with nothing at all. (Guy de Maupassant)
We breathe, sleep, drink, eat, work and then die! The end of life is death. What do you long for? Love? A few kisses and you will be powerless. Money? What for? To gratify your desires. Glory? What coems after it all? Death! Death alone is certain. View quote
Guy de Maupassant
Solitude is indeed dangerous for a working intelligence. We need to have around us people who think and speak. When we are alone for a long time we people the void with phantoms. View quote
Guy de Maupassant
Night was a very different matter. It was dense, thicker than the very walls, and it was empty, so black, so immense that within it you could brush against appalling things and feel roaming and prowling around a strange, mysterious horror. View quote
Guy de Maupassant
In fact living is dying. View quote
Guy de Maupassant
Broad daylight does not encourage the apprehension of horror. View quote
Guy de Maupassant
The only certainty is death. View quote
Guy de Maupassant
One sometimes weeps over one's illusions with as much bitterness as over a death. View quote
Guy de Maupassant
With women there is neither caste nor rank, for beauty, grace and charm take the place of family and birth. Natural ingenuity, instinct for what is elegant, a supple mind are their sole hierarchy, and often make of women of the people the equals of the very greatest ladies. Mathilde suffered ceaselessly, feeling herself born to enjoy all delicacies and all luxuries. View quote
Guy de Maupassant
They held up to admiration all those women who from time to time have arrested the victorious progress of conquerors, made of their bodies a field of battle, a means of ruling, a weapon; who have vanquished by their heroic caresses hideous or detested beings, and sacrificed their chastity to vengeance and devotion. All was said with due restraint and regard for propriety, the effect heightened now and then by an outburst of forced enthusiasm calculated to excite emulation. A listener would have thought at last that the one role of woman on earth was a perpetual sacrifice of her person, a continual abandonment of herself to the caprices of a hostile soldiery. The two nuns seemed to hear nothing, and to be lost in thought. Boule de Suif also was silent. View quote
Guy de Maupassant
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! (Guy de Maupassant)
Let them respect my convictions, and I will respect theirs! View quote
Guy de Maupassant
That was perhaps the only woman I have ever loved - no - that I ever should have loved. Ah, well! who can tell? Circumstances rule one. And then - and then - all passes. View quote
Guy de Maupassant
No one looked at her, no one thought of her. She felt herself swallowed up in the scorn of these virtuous creatures, who had first sacrificed, then rejected her as a thing useless and unclean. View quote
Guy de Maupassant
At first no one spoke. Boule de Suif dared not even raise her eyes. She felt at once indignant with her neighbors, and humiliated at having yielded to the Prussian into whose arms they had so hypocritically cast her. View quote
Guy de Maupassant