Guy de Maupassant
Guy de Maupassant
Henri René Albert Guy de Maupassantmopasɑ̃]; 5 August 1850 – 6 July 1893) was a French writer, remembered as a master of the short story form, and as a representative of the naturalist school of writers, who depicted human lives and destinies and social forces in disillusioned and often pessimistic terms...
NationalityFrench
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth5 August 1850
CountryFrance
Guy de Maupassant quotes about
fear past
The past attracts me, the present frightens me, because the future is death.
peace war government
Every government has as much of a duty to avoid war as a ship's captain has to avoid a shipwreck.
memories giving perfect
Our memory is a more perfect world than the universe: it gives back life to those who no longer exist.
encounters life-worth-living worth-living
It is the lives we encounter that make life worth living.
night silence ears
I love the night passionately... I love it with all my senses: I love to see it, I love to breathe it in, I love to open my ears to its silence, I love my whole body to be caressed by its blackness...
love mean air
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.
army intelligent government
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.
sick body flesh
A sick thought can devour the body's flesh more than fever or consumption.
life white soul
Words dazzle and deceive because they are mimed by the face. But black words on a white page are the soul laid bare.
eye challenges use
To contest an author's right to create a poetic or realistic work is to want to force him to change his temperament, challenge his originality, refuse to allow him to use the eye and the intelligence nature has given him.
men fifty france
There are in France some fifty thousand young men of good birth and fairly well off who are encouraged to live a life of complete idleness. They must either cease to exist or must come to see that there can be no happiness, no health even, without regular daily labor of some sort ... The need of work is in me.
night men air
I told myself: 'I am surrounded by unknown things.' I imagined man without ears, suspecting the existence of sound as we suspect so many hidden mysteries, man noting acoustic phenomena whose nature and provenance he cannot determine. And I grew afraid of everything around me – afraid of the air, afraid of the night. From the moment we can know almost nothing, and from the moment that everything is limitless, what remains? Does emptiness actually not exist? What does exist in this apparent emptiness?
ignorance secret obstacles
The secret is not to betray your ignorance. Just maneuver, avoid the quicksands and obstacles, and the rest can be found in a dictionary.
intelligent fog sea
I have seen mad people, and I have known some who were quite intelligent, lucid, even clear-sighted in every concern of life, except on one point. They could speak clearly, readily, profoundly on everything; till their thoughts were caught in the breakers of their delusions and went to pieces there, were dispersed and swamped in that furious and terrible sea of fogs and squalls which is called MADNESS.