Quotes from The Complete Short Stories of Guy de Maupassant, Part One

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


About the author

Guy de Maupassant
Born place: in Dieppe, France
Born date August 5, 1850
See more on GoodReads

Popular quotes

“But it became clear very quickly that I'd underestimated how much I liked him. Not him, perhaps, but the fact that I had someone on the other end of an invisible line. Someone to update and get updates from, to inform of a comic discovery, to imagine while dancing in a lonely basement, and to return to, finally, when the music stopped.”
― Marina Keegan, quote from The Opposite of Loneliness: Essays and Stories


“Tail held high, Brokentail’s tiny sister pattered forward into the circle to stand beside him. “I give you a life for love of kin,” she mewed, the wisdom in her voice startling Yellowfang as it came from so small a body. “And as Clan leader, remember that every Clan cat is your kin.”
― Erin Hunter, quote from Yellowfang's Secret


“We had enough years in front of us to be serious and grown-up and respectable. Why rush it? But on the other hand we always complained when teachers and other adults treated us as kids. In fact there was nothing that annoyed me more. So it was a frustrating situation. What we needed was a two-sided badge that said 'Mature' on one side and 'Childish' on the other. Then at any moment we could turn it to whatever side we felt like being and the adults could treat us accordingly.”
― John Marsden, quote from Darkness, Be My Friend


“mentally than the other guy, and you’re tougher mentally because”
― John Grisham, quote from Bleachers


“Lovers communicate not inside sentences, but between them. Passion lurks within interstice. It is grouting rather than bricks.”
― Lionel Shriver, quote from The Post-Birthday World


Interesting books

4.48 Psychosis
(2.5K)
4.48 Psychosis
by Sarah Kane
Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk
(23.6K)
Please Kill Me: The...
by Legs McNeil
Shopgirl
(33.3K)
Shopgirl
by Steve Martin
The Big Money
(2K)
The Big Money
by John Dos Passos
Too Big to Fail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System from Crisis — and Themselves
(29.4K)
Too Big to Fail: The...
by Andrew Ross Sorkin
The Return of Rafe MacKade
(9.9K)
The Return of Rafe M...
by Nora Roberts

About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.