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Guy de Maupassant

Guy de Maupassant Quotes

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Famous Guy de Maupassant Quotes

“...perhaps, also this short embrace may infuse in their veins a little of this thrill which they would not have known without it, and will give to those two dead souls, brought to life in a second, the rapid and divine sensation of this intoxication, of this madness which gives to lovers more happiness in an instant than other men can gather during a whole lifetime.”

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Author:Guy de Maupassant
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“There were office-worn gents with yellow faces, bent backs, and one shoulder set slightly higher than the other from spending hours hunched over desks. And their sad, anxious faces spoke volumes about their domestic troubles, never-ending money worries, and all those old hopes which had been dashed for good; for they all belonged to the army of poor threadbare drudges who just about make ends meet in some dismal plasterboard house with a flowerbed for a garden in the rubbish-and-slag-heap belt on the outskirts of Paris.”

PovertyFamily Life
Book:A Day in the Country and Other Stories
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“Some people never have any luck. All at once, as though a thick veil had been whisked aside, he clearly saw the wretchedness―the bottomless, monotonous wretchedness―of his existence. The wretchedness which had been, which was, and which was yet to come. His last days indistinguishable from the first, with nothing ahead of him or behind him or around him, nothing in his heart, nothing anywhere.”

DespairHopelessnessWretchedness
Book:A Day in the Country and Other Stories
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“By nature independent, gay, even exuberant, seductively responsive and given to those spontaneous sallies that sparkle in the conversation of certain daughters of Paris who seem to have inhaled since childhood the pungent breath of the boulevards laden with the nightly laughter of audiences leaving theaters, Madame de Burne's five years of bondage had nonetheless endowed her with a singular timidity which mingled oddly with her youthful mettle, a great fear of saying too much, of going to far, along with a fierce yearning for emancipation and a firm resolve never again to compromise her freedom.”

FearFreedomIndependentParisFierceSingleEmancipation
Book:Alien Hearts
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“Yes, but I say that Nature is our enemy, that we must always fight against Nature, for she is continually bringing us back to an animal state. You may be sure that God has not put anything on this earth that is clean, pretty, elegant or accessory to our ideal; the human brain has done it.”

GodNatureAnimalEnemyCreationHumanHuman BrainIdeal
Book:The collected novels and stories of Guy de Maupassant Volume 1
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“Madeleine in her turn stared at him steadily, straight into his eyes, in a profound, strange way, as if seeking to read something there, as if seeking to discover there that hidden part of a human being which can never be fathomed but may perhaps be glimpsed for a fleeting instant, in those moments of unguardedness or surrender or inattention, that are like doors left ajar onto the mysterious depths of the spirit... they stood for a few seconds, each gazing into the other's eyes, each striving to reach the impenetrable secret of the other's heart, to probe each other's thoughts to the quick. They tried, in a mute and passionate questioning, to see the other's conscience in its essential truth: the intimate struggles of two beings who, living side by side, never really know one another, who suspect and sniff around and spy on one another, but cannot plumb the miry depths of one another's soul.”

Human NatureCommunicationThought Provoking
Book:Bel-Ami
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“We are, on earth, two distinct races. Those who have need of others, whom others amuse, engage soothe, whom solitude harasses, pains, stupefies, like the movement of a terrible glacier or the traversing of the desert; and those, on the contrary, whom others weary, tire, bore, silently torture, whom isolation calms and bathes in the repose of independency, and plunges into the humors of their own thoughts. In fine, there is here a normal, physical phenomenon. Some are constituted to live a life outside of themselves, others, to live a life within themselves. As for me, my exterior associations are abruptly and painfully short-lived, and, as they reach their limits, I experience in my whole body and in my whole intelligence an intolerable uneasiness.”

LifeHumanity
Author:Guy de Maupassant
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“Хүмүүс бий болсон үеэсээ эхлэн үүрд ганцаардан хоригдсон хоригдол болсон зүрх сэтгэл цохилон байдаг бүрхэвчийг нэвтлэн урахыг хий дэмий цөхрөлтгүй оролдон, гар хөл, уруул ам, харц, тачаадан дагжсан нүцгэн биеэрээ, янаглалд сульдсан хайр сэтгэлээрээ дараа нь бас л хаягдан ганцаардах өөр нэгэнд амьдралыг өгөх гэж хий дэмий хүч тавьдaг.”

Loneliness
Author:Guy de Maupassant
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“Mariez-vous, mon ami, vous ne savez pas ce que c’est que de vivre seul, à mon âge. La solitude, aujourd’hui, m’emplit d’une angoisse horrible : la solitude dans le logis, auprès du feu, le soir. Il me semble alors que je suis seul sur la terre, affreusement seul, mais entouré de dangers vagues, de choses inconnues et terribles ; et la cloison qui me sépare de mon voisin que je ne connais pas, m’éloigne de lui autant que des étoiles aperçues par ma fenêtre. Une sorte de fièvre m’envahit, une fièvre de douleur et de crainte, et le silence des murs m’épouvante. Il est si profond et si triste, le silence de la chambre où l’on vit seul. Ce n’est pas seulement un silence autour du corps, mais un silence autour de l’âme, et, quand un meuble craque, on tressaille jusqu’au cœur, car aucun bruit n’est attendu dans ce morne logis.”

Loneliness
Book:Bel-Ami
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“She was simple, not being able to adorn herself, but she was unhappy, as one out of her class; for women belong to no caste, no race, their grace, their beauty and their charm serving them in place of birth and family. Their inborn finesse, their instinctive elegance, their suppleness of wit, are their only aristocracy, making some daughters of the people the equal of great ladies.”

ClassAristocracy
Book:A Piece of String / The Necklace
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“It is love that is sacred," she said." Listen, child, to an old woman who has seen three generations, and who has had a long experience of men and women. Marriage and love have nothing in common. We marry to found a family, and we form families in order to constitute society. Society cannot dispense with marriage. If society is a chain, each family is a link in that chain. In order to weld those links, we always seek metals of the same order. When we marry, we must bring together suitable conditions; we must combine fortunes, unite similiar races and aim at the common interest, which is riches and children. We marry only once, my child, because the world requires us to do so, but we love twenty times in one lifetime because nature has made us like this. Marriage, you see, is law and love is an instinct which impels us, sometimes along a straight, and sometimes along a devious path. The world has made laws to combat our instincts- it was necessary to make them; but our instincts are always stronger, and we ought not to resist them too much, because they come from God; while laws come from men. If we did not perfume life with love, as much love as possible,darling, as we put sugar into drugs for children, nobody would care to take it just as it is.”

Common Sense
Author:Guy de Maupassant
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“I should add, however, by way of justification of French politeness, that our fellow-countrymen are, when travelling, models of good manners in comparison with the abominable English, who seem to have been brought up in a stable, so careful are they not to discommode themselves in any way, while they always discommode their neighbors.”

MannersEnglish TravellersFrench TravellersThe Impolite Sex
Book:Complete Original Short Stories of Guy De Maupassant
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“March 20th. It is done. He was guillotined this morning. He made a good end, very good. It gave me infinite pleasure. How sweet it is to see a man's head cut off! The blood spurted out like a wave, like a wave. Oh, if I could, I would have liked to have bathed in it! What intoxicating ecstasy to crouch below it, to receive it in my hair and on my face, and rise up all crimson, all crimson! Ah, if people knew!”

BloodMurderGuillotineA Madman
Book:88 More Stories
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“I have always had a solitary disposition...I have always lived alone, as a result of a kind of uneasiness which comes over me when I am with other people...It's not that I refuse to see people, or to chat to them, or to have dinner with friends, but when I've been with them for some time, even with people I know best, I find that they weary me, tire me out, get on my nerves - and with a growing feeling of exasperation I long to see them go, or go away myself, so that I can be alone.”

Solitude
Book:Who Knows?
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“It is man who has introduced a little grace, beauty, unknown charm and mystery into creation by singing about it, interpreting it, by admiring it as a poet, idealizing it as an artist and by explaining it through science, doubtless making mistakes, but finding ingenious reasons, hidden grace and beauty, unknown charm and mystery in the various phenomena of Nature. God created only coarse beings, full of the germs of disease, who, after a few years of bestial enjoyment, grow old and infirm, with all the ugliness and all the want of power of human decrepitude.”

ArtGodSciencePoetryHumanityNatureAnimalMysteryMankindCreationDiseaseCharmAgeingInfirmityDecrepitude
Author:Guy de Maupassant
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“La plus violente douleur qu'on puisse éprouver, certes, est la perte d'un enfant pour une mère, et la perte de la mère pour un homme. Cela est violent, terrible, cela bouleverse et déchire; mais on guérit de ces catastrophes comme des larges blessures saignantes. Or, certaines rencontres, certaines choses entr'aperçues, devinées, certains chagrins secrets, certaines perfidies du sort, qui remuent en nous tout un monde douloureux de pensées, qui entr'ouvrent devant nous brusquement la porte mystérieuse des souffrances morales, compliquées, incurables, d'autant plus profondes qu'elles semblent bénignes, d'autant plus cuisantes qu'elles semblent presque insaisissables, d'autant plus tenaces qu'elles semblent factices, nous laissent à l'âme comme une traînée, un goût d'amertume, une sensation de désenchantement dont nous sommes longtemps à nous débarrasser.”

MemoryNostalgiaMelancholySereneIntangibleGaietyRemnantAncien RégimeMenuet
Book:Contes de la Bécasse
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“For a number of years he had lived, eaten, laughed, loved, hoped, like everyone else. And for him it was over, over for good. A life! A few days, and then nothing! You're born, you grow up, you're happy, you wait, then you die. Goodbye! Man or woman, you'll never return to this earth! And yet each of us bears within him the fierce, unrealizable longing for eternity, each of us is a kind of universe within the universe, and each of us soon vanishes completely into the dunghill of new organisms. Plants, animals, men, stars, worlds, everything quickens, then dies, in order to transform itself. And nothing ever returns, whether insect, man, or planet!”

Death
Book:Bel-Ami
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“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 feet; the tiniest sounds carry a long way in the dry air; the blue sky is bright as a mirror, and the sun moves through space in icy brilliance, casting on the frozen world rays which bestow no warmth upon anything.”

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Book:Bel-Ami
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“On the land adjoining La Grenouillère strollers were sauntering under the gigantic trees which help to make this part of the island one of the most delightful parks imaginable. Busty women with peroxided hair and nipped-in waists could be seen, made up to the nines with blood red lips and black-kohled eyes. Tightly laced into their garish dresses they trailed in all their vulgar glory over the fresh green grass. They were accompanied by men whose fashion-plate accessories, light gloves, patent-leather boots, canes as slender as threads and absurd monocles made them look like complete idiots.”

Femme FataleStrollersParisiansLa Grenouillère
Book:A Parisian Affair and Other Stories
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“A boat with an awning and containing four women came slowly downstream towards them. The woman at the oars was small, lean, and past her prime. She wore her hair pinned up inside an oilskin hat. Opposite her a big blonde dressed in a man's jacket was lying on her back at the bottom of the boat with a foot resting on the thwart on either side of the oarswoman. The blonde was smoking a cigarette and with each jerk of the oars her bosom and belly quivered. At the very stern of the boat under the awning two beautiful, tall, slender girls, one blonde and the other brunette, sat with their arms round each other's waists watching their two companions. A shout went up from La Grenouillere: "Aye-aye! Lesbos!" and suddenly a wild clamor broke out. In the terrifying scramble to see, glasses were knocked over and people started climbing on the tables. Everyone began to chant "Lesbos! Lesbos! Lesbos!" The words merged into a vague howl before suddenly starting up again, rising into the air, filling the plain beyond, resounding in the dense foliage of the tall surrounding trees and echoing in the distance as if aimed at the sun itself.”

Femme Fatale
Book:A Parisian Affair and Other Stories
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“There are two races on earth. Those who need others, who are distracted, occupied and refreshed by others, who are worried, exhausted and unnerved by solitude as by the ascension of a terrible glacier or the crossing of a desert; and those, on the other hand, who are wearied, bored, embarrassed, utterly fatigued by others, while isolation calms them, and the detachment and imaginative activity of their minds bathes them in peace.”

IntrovertsExtroverts88 Short Stories
Book:88 Short Stories
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“Next item—three ladies, all English, a mother and two daughters. Each wears a helping of whipped white of egg on the top of their head; rather remarkable. The daughters are old, like the mother. The mother is old, like the daughters. All three are thin, flat-chested, tall, stiff, and tired-looking; their front teeth are worn outside, to intimidate plates and men.”

88 Short StoriesNos AnglaisOur Friends The EnglishEnglish Ladies
Book:88 Short Stories
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“For some years he had felt weighing on him the burden of loneliness which sometimes overwhelms old bachelors. He had been strong, active and cheerful, spending his days in sport, and his evenings in amusement. Now he was growing dull, and no longer took interest in anything. Exercise tired him, suppers and even dinners made him ill, while women bored him as much as they had once amused him.”

LonelinessBachelors88 Short StoriesDuchoux
Book:88 Short Stories
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