Sidonie Gabrielle Colette
Sidonie Gabrielle Colette
Colettewas a French novelist nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1948. Her best known work, the novella Gigi, was the basis for the film and Lerner and Loewe stage production of the same name. She was also a mime, an actress and a journalist...
NationalityFrench
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth28 January 1873
CountryFrance
mother flower blessed
On the first of May, with my comrades of the catechism class, I laid lilac, chamomile and rose before the altar of the Virgin, and returned full of pride to show my blessed posy. My mother laughed her irreverent laugh and, looking at my bunch of flowers, which was bringing the may-bug into the sitting-room right under the lamp, she said: Do you suppose it wasn't already blessed before?
flower modesty sincerity
Sincerity is not a spontaneous flower nor is modesty either.
memories flower mean
By means of an image we are often able to hold on to our lost belongings. But it is the desperateness of losing which picks the flowers of memory, binds the bouquet.
struggle flower writing
To write is to pour one’s innermost self passionately upon the tempting paper, at such frantic speed that sometimes one’s hand struggles and rebels, overdriven by the impatient god which guides it - and to find, next day, in place of the golden bough that bloomed miraculously in that dazzling hour, a withered bramble and a stunted flower.
demands equal french-novelist rights thinks
The woman who thinks she is intelligent demands equal rights with men. A woman who is intelligent does not.
literature want sincere
If we want to be sincere, we must admit that there is a well-nourished love and an ill-nourished love. And the rest is literature.
jealousy sight firsts
Jealousy is not at all low, but it catches us humbled and bowed down, at first sight.
gratitude animal understanding
A kindly gesture bestowed by us on an animal arouses prodigies of understanding and gratitude.
enjoyment wells
We only do well the things we like doing.
pride self doubt
The only virtue on which I pride myself is my self-doubt; when a writer loses her self-doubt, the time has come to lay aside her pen.
thinking foolish
You don't think before you do something foolish. You do your thinking afterwards.
voice joy lovely
That lovely voice; how I should weep for joy if I could hear it now!
years time-flies together
- and how time flies! What, has it already been twenty years, already forty years that we are together? Why, how terrible! We haven't yet said all we wanted to say to each other... May we have a little respite, or else may we be allowed to begin all over again!
mother tree heaven
A few days later, I found my mother beneath the tree, motionless with excitement, her head turned toward the heavens in which she would allow human religions no place.