Guy de Maupassant · 520 pages
Rating: (861 votes)
“The kiss itself is immortal. It travels from lip to lip, century to century, from age to age. Men and women garner these kisses, offer them to others and then die in turn.”
― Guy de Maupassant, quote from The Complete Short Stories of Guy de Maupassant, Part One
“Why does one love? How queer it is to see only one being in the world, to have only one thought in one's mind, only one desire in the heart, and only one name on the lips--a name which comes up continually, rising, like the water in a spring, from the depths of the soul to the lips, a name which one repeats over and over again, which one whispers ceaselessly, everywhere, like a prayer.”
― Guy de Maupassant, quote from The Complete Short Stories of Guy de Maupassant, Part One
“Night was a very different matter. It was dense, thicker than the very walls, and it was empty, so black, so immense that within it you could brush against appalling things and feel roaming and prowling around a strange, mysterious horror.”
― Guy de Maupassant, quote from The Complete Short Stories of Guy de Maupassant, Part One
“When the first fine spring days come, and the earth awakes and assumes its garment of verdure, when the perfumed warmth of the air blows on our faces and fills our lungs, and even appears to penetrate to our heart, we feel vague longings for undefined happiness, a wish to run, to walk at random, to inhale the spring.”
― Guy de Maupassant, quote from The Complete Short Stories of Guy de Maupassant, Part One
“Killing is decreed by law but nature loves eternal youth. Whatever she does, however unconscious and unfeeling the act, she seems to cry out: ‘Quick! Quick! Quick!’ And the more she destroys, the more she is renewed.”
― Guy de Maupassant, quote from The Complete Short Stories of Guy de Maupassant, Part One
“But he asked himself now if he would not be disobeying God. And does not God permit love, since He surrounds it with such visible splendor?”
― Guy de Maupassant, quote from The Complete Short Stories of Guy de Maupassant, Part One
“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.”
― Guy de Maupassant, quote from The Complete Short Stories of Guy de Maupassant, Part One
“We are all very much alike in France in this respect; we still remain knights, knights of love and fortune, since God has been abolished whose bodyguard we really were. But nobody can ever get woman out of our hearts; there she is, and there she will remain, and we love her, and shall continue to love her, and go on committing all kinds of follies on her account as long as there is a France on the map of Europe; and even if France were to be wiped off the map, there would always be Frenchmen left.”
― Guy de Maupassant, quote from The Complete Short Stories of Guy de Maupassant, Part One
“....and I gazed at these forms incomprehensible to me, but which revealed the immortal thoughts of the greatest shatterer of dreams who had ever dwelt on earth.”
― Guy de Maupassant, quote from The Complete Short Stories of Guy de Maupassant, Part One
“Water, water, everywhere,
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, everywhere,
Nor any drop to drink.”
― Samuel Taylor Coleridge, quote from The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
“Like most men, Sherman was innocent of the routine salutatory techniques of the fashionable hostesses. For at least forty-five seconds every guest was the closest, dearest, jolliest, most wittily conspiratorial friend a girl ever had. Every male guest she touched on the arm (any other part of the body presented problems) and applied a little heartfelt pressure. Every guest, male or female, she looked at with a radar lock upon the eyes, as if captivated (by the brilliance, the wit, the beauty, and the incomparable memories).”
― Tom Wolfe, quote from The Bonfire of the Vanities
“People who sacrifice beauty for efficiency get what they deserve. (Bernard Mickey Wrangle, p 99)”
― Tom Robbins, quote from Still Life with Woodpecker
“I like to get ten pages a day, which amounts to 2,000 words. That’s 180,000 words over a three-month span, a goodish length for a book — something in which the reader can get happily lost, if the tale is done well and stays fresh.”
― Stephen King, quote from On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
“It's not the end of the world at all," he said. "It's only the end for us. The world will go on just the same, only we shan't be in it. I dare say it will get along all right without us.”
― Nevil Shute, quote from On the Beach
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