"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."

Colette, Sidonie Gabrielle on Age and Aging
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"One keeps forgetting old age up to the very brink of the grave."

Colette, Sidonie Gabrielle on Age and Aging
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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... "

Colette, Sidonie Gabrielle on Dissipation
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"You will do foolish things, but do them with enthusiasm."

Colette, Sidonie Gabrielle on Enthusiasm
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"And what a delight it is to make friends with someone you have despised."

Colette, Sidonie Gabrielle on Friends and Friendship
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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."

Colette, Sidonie Gabrielle on Friends and Friendship
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"My true friends have always given me that supreme proof of devotion, a spontaneous aversion for the man I loved."

Colette, Sidonie Gabrielle on Friends and Friendship
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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."

Colette, Sidonie Gabrielle on Girls
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"In the matter of furnishing, I find a certain absence of ugliness far worse than ugliness."

Colette, Sidonie Gabrielle on Home
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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?"

Colette, Sidonie Gabrielle on Infatuation
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"The woman who thinks she is intelligent demands equal rights with men. A woman who is intelligent does not."

Colette, Sidonie Gabrielle on Intelligence and Intellectuals
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"Jealousy is not at all low, but it catches us humbled and bowed down, at first sight."

Colette, Sidonie Gabrielle on Jealousy
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"What a wonderful life I've had! I only wish I'd realized it sooner."

Colette, Sidonie Gabrielle on Life and Living
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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."

Colette, Sidonie Gabrielle on Animals
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"A pretty little collection of weaknesses and a terror of spiders are our indispensable stock-in-trade with the men."

Colette, Sidonie Gabrielle on Men and Women
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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."

Colette, Sidonie Gabrielle on Models and Modeling
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"I love my past, I love my present. I am not ashamed of what I have had, and I am not sad because I no longer have it."

Colette, Sidonie Gabrielle on Past
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"Look for a long time at what pleases you, and a longer time at what pains you."

Colette, Sidonie Gabrielle on Pleasure
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"To a poet, silence is an acceptable response, even a flattering one."

Colette, Sidonie Gabrielle on Poetry and Poets
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"Researchers, with science as their authority, will be able to cut [Animals] up, alive, into small pieces, drop them from a great height to see if they are shattered by the fall, or deprive them of sleep for sixteen days and nights continuously for the purposes of an iniquitous monograph... Animal trust, undeserved faith, when at last will you turn away from us? Shall we never tire of deceiving, betraying, tormenting animals before they cease to trust us?"

Colette, Sidonie Gabrielle on Science and Scientists
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"Sincerity is not a spontaneous flower nor is modesty either."

Colette, Sidonie Gabrielle on Sincerity
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"The lovesick, the betrayed, and the jealous all smell alike."

Colette, Sidonie Gabrielle on Smells
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"Smokers, male and female, inject and excuse idleness in their lives every time they light a cigarette."

Colette, Sidonie Gabrielle on Smoking
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"Is suffering so very serious? I have come to doubt it. It may be quite childish, a sort of undignified pastime -- I'm referring to the kind of suffering a man inflicts on a woman or a woman on a man. It's extremely painful. I agree that it's hardly bearable. But I very much fear that this sort of pain deserves no consideration at all. It's no more worthy of respect than old age or illness."

Colette, Sidonie Gabrielle on Suffering
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"You do not notice changes in what is always before you."

Colette, Sidonie Gabrielle on Change
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"No temptation can ever be measured by the value of its object."

Colette, Sidonie Gabrielle on Temptation
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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."

Colette, Sidonie Gabrielle on Ugliness
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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."

Colette, Sidonie Gabrielle on Villains
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"Girls usually have a paper mache face on their wedding day."

Colette, Sidonie Gabrielle on Weddings
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"January, month of empty pockets! Let us endure this evil month, anxious as a theatrical producer's forehead."

Colette, Sidonie Gabrielle on Winter
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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."

Colette, Sidonie Gabrielle on Writers and Writing
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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."

Colette, Sidonie Gabrielle on Absence
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"It is not a bad thing that children should occasionally, and politely, put parents in their place."

Colette, Sidonie Gabrielle on Children
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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."

Colette, Sidonie Gabrielle on Choice
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"It is wise to apply the oil of refined politeness to the mechanism of friendship."

Colette, Sidonie Gabrielle on Courtesy
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