More Quotes by Guy de Maupassant
Patriotism is a kind of religion; it is the egg from which wars are hatched.
The essence of life is the smile of round female bottoms, under the shadow of cosmic boredom.
Life is a slope. As long as you're going up you're always looking towards the top and you feel happy, but when you reach it, suddenly you can see the road going downhill and death at the end of it all. It's slow going up and quick going down.
You have the army of mediocrities followed by the multitude of fools. As the mediocrities and the fools always form the immense majority, it is impossible for them to elect an intelligent government.
Our memory is a more perfect world than the universe: it gives back life to those who no longer exist.
Whether we are describing a king, an assassin, a thief, an honest man, a prostitute, a nun, a young girl, or a stallholder in a market, it is always ourselves that we are describing.
It is the lives we encounter that make life worth living.
To love very much is to love inadequately; we love-that is all. Love cannot be modified without being nullified. Love is a short word but it contains everything. Love means the body, the soul, the life, the entire being. We feel love as we feel the warmth of our blood, we breathe love as we breathe the air, we hold it in ourselves as we hold our thoughts. Nothing more exists for us. Love is not a word; it is a wordless state indicated by four letters.
Words dazzle and deceive because they are mimed by the face. But black words on a white page are the soul laid bare.
We live always under the weight of the old and odious customs... of our barbarous ancestors.
