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Absence
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It takes time for the absent to assume their true shape in our thoughts. After death they take on a firmer outline and then cease to change.
-Sidonie Gabrielle Colette
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Age
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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
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One keeps forgetting old age up to the very brink of the grave.
-Sidonie Gabrielle Colette
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Animals
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Shall we never have done with that cliche, so stupid that it could only be human, about the sympathy of animals for man when he is unhappy? Animals love happiness almost as much as we do. A fit of crying disturbs them, they'll sometimes imitate sobbing, and for a moment they'll reflect our sadness. But they flee unhappiness as they flee fever, and I believe that in the long run they are capable of boycotting it.
-Sidonie Gabrielle Colette
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Appearance
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It's nothing to be born ugly. Sensibly, the ugly woman comes to terms with her ugliness and exploits it as a grace of nature. To become ugly means the beginning of a calamity, self-willed most of the time.
-Sidonie Gabrielle Colette
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Authors & Writing
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The writer who loses his self-doubt, who gives way as he grows old to a sudden euphoria, to prolixity, should stop writing immediately: the time has come for him to lay aside his pen.
-Sidonie Gabrielle Colette
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Change
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You do not notice changes in what is always before you.
-Sidonie Gabrielle Colette
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Children
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It is not a bad thing that children should occasionally, and politely, put parents in their place.
-Sidonie Gabrielle Colette
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There is no need to waste pity on young girls who are having their moments of disillusionment, for in another moment they will recover their illusion.
-Sidonie Gabrielle Colette
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Choice
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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
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Crime
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As for an authentic villain, the real thing, the absolute, the artist, one rarely meets him even once in a lifetime. The ordinary bad hat is always in part a decent fellow.
-Sidonie Gabrielle Colette
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Despair
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Voluptuaries, consumed by their senses, always begin by flinging themselves with a great display of frenzy into an abyss. But they survive, they come to the surface again. And they develop a routine of the abyss: It's four o clock. At five I have my abyss...
-Sidonie Gabrielle Colette
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Enthusiasm
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You will do foolish things, but do them with enthusiasm.
-Sidonie Gabrielle Colette
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Envy / Jealousy
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Jealousy is not at all low, but it catches us humbled and bowed down, at first sight.
-Sidonie Gabrielle Colette
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Fashion
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Among all the modernized aspects of the most luxurious of industries, the model, a vestige of voluptuous barbarianism, is like some plunder-laden prey. She is the object of unbridled regard, a living bait, the passive realization of an ideal. No other female occupation contains such potent impulses to moral disintegration as this one, applying as it does the outward signs of riches to a poor and beautiful girl.
-Sidonie Gabrielle Colette
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Friends
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And what a delight it is to make friends with someone you have despised.
-Sidonie Gabrielle Colette
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But just as delicate fare does not stop you from craving for saveloys, so tried and exquisite friendship does not take away your taste for something new and dubious.
-Sidonie Gabrielle Colette
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My true friends have always given me that supreme proof of devotion, a spontaneous aversion for the man I loved.
-Sidonie Gabrielle Colette
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Home
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In the matter of furnishing, I find a certain absence of ugliness far worse than ugliness.
-Sidonie Gabrielle Colette
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Infatuation
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Can it be that chance has made me one of those women so immersed in one man that, whether they are barren or not, they carry with them to the grave the shriveled innocence of an old maid?
-Sidonie Gabrielle Colette
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Intelligence
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The woman who thinks she is intelligent demands equal rights with men. A woman who is intelligent does not.
-Sidonie Gabrielle Colette
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Life
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What a wonderful life I've had! I only wish I'd realized it sooner.
-Sidonie Gabrielle Colette
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Manners
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It is wise to apply the oil of refined politeness to the mechanism of friendship.
-Sidonie Gabrielle Colette
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Marriage
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Girls usually have a paper mâché face on their wedding day.
-Sidonie Gabrielle Colette
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Men & Women
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A pretty little collection of weaknesses and a terror of spiders are our indispensable stock-in-trade with the men.
-Sidonie Gabrielle Colette
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Books by and about Sidonie Gabrielle Colette