Quotes by Guy de Maupassant

“He seemed to have established in his mind an affinity between the two great passions of his life pale ale and revolution and assuredly he could not taste the one without dreaming of the other.”

“There was an undoubted affinity in his mind between the two great passions of his life: revolution and good brew. The taste of one immediately brought to mind the other.”

“Some people never have any luck. All at once, as though a thick veil had been whisked aside, he clearly saw the wretchednessthe bottomless, monotonous wretchednessof his existence. The wretchedness...”

“And involuntarily I compared the childish sarcasm, the religious sarcasm of Voltaire with the irresistible irony of the German philosopher whose influence is henceforth ineffaceable.”

“Everything is false, everything is possible, everything is doubtful.”

“The love between man and woman is a voluntary pact in which the one who falls short is only guilty of perfidy, but when a woman has become a mother her duty is greater because nature has entrusted ...”

“Everything I see reminds me that in a few days I shall no longer see it... It's horrible... I shall see nothing more... nothing of what exists... the smallest objects that we use... glasses... plat...”

“I have coveted everything and taken pleasure in nothing.”

“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.”

“Why not other elements besides fire, air, earth and water? There are four of them, just four, those foster parents of beings! What a pity! Why aren't there forty elements instead, or four hundred, ...”

“I have an immoderate passion for water; for the sea, though so vast, so restless, so beyond one's comprehension; for rivers, beautiful, yet fugitive and elusive; but especially for marshes, teeming...”

“But a vague jealousy, one of those dormant jealousies that develop between brothers or sisters almost unnoticed until maturity, only to burst out when one of them marries or has a stroke of good fo...”

“It was then between one o'clock in the morning and half-past that hour; the sky soon cleared a bit before me, and the lunar crescent peeped out from behind the clouds - that sad crescent of the las...”

“It was one of those bitter mornings when the whole of nature is shiny, brittle, and hard, like crystal. The trees, decked out in frost, seem to have sweated ice; the earth resounds beneath one's fe...”

“Military men are the scourges of the world.”

“Patriotism is a kind of religion it is the egg from which wars are hatched.”

“It is better to be unhappy in love than unhappy in marriage, but some people manage to be both.”

“The essence of life is the smile of round female bottoms, under the shadow of cosmic boredom.”

“They were so absorbed in their plotting that they did not hear Boule de Suif return. But the Comte's whispered 'shh!' made them all look up. There she was. A sudden silence fell, and at first a fee...”

“I entered literary life as a meteor, and I shall leave it like a thunder”