Colette citáty

strana 2

„Naši dokonalí společníci nikdy nemají méně než čtyři nohy.“

„Miluji svou minulost. Miluji svou přítomnost. Nestydím se za to, co jsem měla, a nejsem smutná, protože už to nemám.“

„Ukonáš pošetilé věci, ale dělej je s nadšením.“

„Koho milujeme, toho nejsme nikdy pevně rozhodnuti opustit, i kdyby nám sebevíc ublížil.“

„Diskrétnost je umění vyžvanit tajemství tak, aby pečeť mlčenlivosti nebyla porušena.“

„Žárlivost je vlastně násilí, jehož obětí je láska.“

„Velká láska neznamená zamilovat se z touhy, ale z přesvědčení.“

„Láska je tornádo, přátelství je neustále vanoucí pasát.“

„Zamilovaná žena raději obětuje svou dobrou pověst, než ideály o milenci.“

„Práce je jako krásná žena – nerada čeká.“

„Čas strávený s kočkou není nikdy promarněný.“

„Srdce nemá vrásek, bývají na něm pouze jizvy.“

„Rozvod je třísknutí dveřmi.“

„Muži si nás neberou, my mužům pomáháme, aby si nás vzali.“

„Jaký jsem to měla báječný život! Kéž bych to byla dřív pochopila!“

„Naděje nic nestojí.“

„Děláme dobře jen věci, které máme rádi.“

„Ať už máte co do činění se zvířetem nebo s dítětem, přesvědčete je o oslabení.“

“If he's getting married, he's not longer interesting.”

“I did not look for her, because I was afraid of dispelling the mystery we attach to people whom we know only casually.”

“I want nothing from love, in short, but love.”

“To a poet, silence is an acceptable response, even a flattering one.”

“I have found my voice again and the art of using it…”

“To be astonished is one of the surest ways of not growing old too quickly.”

“Then, bidding farewell to The Knick-Knack, I went to collect the few personal belongings which, at that time, I held to be invaluable: my cat, my resolve to travel, and my solitude.”

“If I can't have too many truffles, I'll do without truffles”

“You do not notice changes in what is always before you.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Perhaps the only misplaced curiosity is that which persists in trying to find out here, on this side of death, what lies beyond the grave.”

“A pretty little collection of weaknesses and a terror of spiders are our indispensable stock-in-trade with the men… nine men out of ten are superstitious, nineteen out of twenty believe in the evil eye, and ninety-eight out of a hundred are afraid of spiders. They forgive us — oh! for many things, but not for the absence in us of their own feelings.”

“By means of an image we are often able to hold on to our lost belongings. But it is the desperateness of losing which picks the flowers of memory, binds the bouquet.”

“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.””

“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.”

“Smokers, male and female, inject and excuse idleness in their lives every time they light a cigarette.”

“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.”

“The true traveler is he who goes on foot, and even then, he sits down a lot of the time.”

“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.”

“Whether you are dealing with an animal or a child, to convince is to weaken.”

“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.”

“Kiki-The-Demure: Once when I was little She tried to give me castor oil. I scratched and bit her so, she never tried again. Ha! She must have thought she held the devil between her knees. I squirmed, blew fire through my nostrils, multiplied my twenty claws by a hundred, my teeth by one thousand, and finally — disappeared as if by magic.
Toby-Dog: I wouldn't dare do that. You see, I love her. I love her enough to forgive her even the torture of the bath.”

“Don’t ever wear artistic jewellry; it wrecks a woman’s reputation.”

“It is wise to apply the oil of refined politeness to the mechanisms of friendship.”

“The day after that wedding night I found that a distance of a thousand miles, abyss and discovery and irremediable metamorphosis, separated me from the day before.”

“In the matter of furnishing, I find a certain absence of ugliness far worse than ugliness.”

“Humility has its origin in an awareness of unworthiness, and sometimes too in a dazzled awareness of saintliness.”