Guy de Maupassant

It is better to be unhappy in love than unhappy in marriage, but some people manage to be both.

— Guy de Maupassant

In fact living is dying.

— Guy de Maupassant

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.

— Guy de Maupassant

It is better to be unhappy in love than unhappy in marriage, but some people manage to be both.

— Guy de Maupassant

For a number of years he had lived, eaten, laughed, loved, hoped, like everyone else. And for him it was over, over for good. A life! A few days, and then nothing! You're born, you grow up, you're happy, you wait, then you die. Goodbye! Man or woman, you'll never return to this earth! And yet each of us bears within him the fierce, unrealizable longing for eternity, each of us is a kind of universe within the universe, and each of us soon vanishes completely into the dunghill of new organisms. Plants, animals, men, stars, worlds, everything quickens, then dies, in order to transform itself. And nothing ever returns, whether insect, man, or planet!

— Guy de Maupassant

The only certainty is death.

— Guy de Maupassant

I entered literary life as a meteor, and I shall leave it like a thunderbolt.

— Guy de Maupassant

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.

— Guy de Maupassant

I have come to the conclusion that the bed comprehends our whole life; for we were bom in it, we live in it, and we shall die in it.

— Guy de Maupassant

I took the book from him reverently, 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

Great minds that are healthy are never considered geniuses, while this sublime qualification is lavished on brains that are often inferior but are slightly touched by madness.

— Guy de Maupassant

Let them respect my convictions, and I will respect theirs!

— Guy de Maupassant

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.

— Guy de Maupassant

There is only one good thing in life, and that is love. And how you misunderstand it! how you spoil it! You treat it as something solemn like a sacrament, or something to be bought, like a dress.

— Guy de Maupassant

Love is always love, come whence it may. A heart that beats at your approach, an eye that weeps when you go away are things so rare, so sweet, so precious that they must never be despised.

— Guy de Maupassant

Patriotism is a kind of religion; it is the egg from which wars are hatched.

— Guy de Maupassant

A man forced to spend his life without ever having the right, without ever finding the time, to shut himself up all alone, no matter where, to think, to reflect, to work, to dream? Ah! my dear boy, a key, the key of a door which one can lock — this is happiness, mark you, the only happiness!

— Guy de Maupassant

Our memory is a more perfect world than the universe: it gives back life to those who no longer exist.

— Guy de Maupassant

A legal kiss is never as good as a stolen one.

— Guy de Maupassant

For several days in succession fragments of a defeated army had passed through the town. They were mere disorganized bands, not disciplined forces. The men wore long, dirty beards and tattered uniforms; they advanced in listless fashion, without a flag, without a leader. All seemed exhausted, worn out, incapable of thought or resolve, marching onward merely by force of habit, and dropping to the ground with fatigue the moment they halted.

— Guy de Maupassant

Life seemed to have stopped short; the shops were shut, the streets deserted. Now and then an inhabitant, awed by the silence, glided swiftly by in the shadow of the walls. The anguish of suspense made men even desire the arrival of the enemy.

— Guy de Maupassant

At the end of a short time, once the first terror had subsided, calm was again restored. In many houses the Prussian officer ate at the same table with the family. He was often well-bred, and, out of politeness, expressed sympathy with France and repugnance at being compelled to take part in the war. This sentiment was received with gratitude; besides, his protection might be needful some day or other.

— Guy de Maupassant

Legitimized love always despises its easygoing brother.

— Guy de Maupassant

In the cold light of the morning they almost bore a grudge against the girl for not having secretly sought out the Prussian, that the rest of the party might receive a joyful surprise when they awoke. What more simple? But no one as yet confessed to such thoughts.

— Guy de Maupassant

The count uttered several rather risky witticisms, but so tactfully were they said that his audience could not help smiling. Loiseau in turn made some considerably broader jokes, but no one took offence; and the thought expressed with such brutal directness by his wife was uppermost in the minds of all: "Since it's the girl's trade, why should she refuse this man more than another?"

— Guy de Maupassant

At first no one spoke. Boule de Suif dared not even raise her eyes. She felt at once indignant with her neighbors, and humiliated at having yielded to the Prussian into whose arms they had so hypocritically cast her.

— Guy de Maupassant

No one looked at her, no one thought of her. She felt herself swallowed up in the scorn of these virtuous creatures, who had first sacrificed, then rejected her as a thing useless and unclean.

— Guy de Maupassant

The girl was one of those pretty and charming young creatures who sometimes are born, as if by a slip of fate, into a family of clerks. She had no dowry, no expectations, no way of being known, understood, loved, married by any rich and distinguished man; so she let herself be married to a little clerk of the Ministry of Public Instruction.

— Guy de Maupassant

With women there is neither caste nor rank, for beauty, grace and charm take the place of family and birth. Natural ingenuity, instinct for what is elegant, a supple mind are their sole hierarchy, and often make of women of the people the equals of the very greatest ladies. Mathilde suffered ceaselessly, feeling herself born to enjoy all delicacies and all luxuries.

— Guy de Maupassant

What would have happened if she had not lost that necklace? Who knows? who knows? How strange and changeful is life! How small a thing is needed to make or ruin us!

— Guy de Maupassant

I was hard hit. I wanted to ask this little girl to marry me. If we had passed eight days together, I should have done so! How weak and incomprehensible a man sometimes is!

— Guy de Maupassant

That was perhaps the only woman I have ever loved — no — that I ever should have loved. Ah, well! who can tell? Circumstances rule one. And then — and then — all passes.

— Guy de Maupassant

We live always under the weight of the old and odious customs … of our barbarous ancestors.

— Guy de Maupassant

Military men are the scourges of the world.

— Guy de Maupassant

Since governments take the right of death over their people, it is not astonishing if the people should sometimes take the right of death over governments.

— Guy de Maupassant

Any government has as much of a duty to avoid war as a ship's captain has to avoid a shipwreck.

— Guy de Maupassant

Every government has as much of a duty to avoid war as a ship's captain has to avoid a shipwreck.

— Guy de Maupassant

If I could, I would stop the passage of time. But hour follows on hour, minute on minute, each second robbing me of a morsel of myself for the nothing of tomorrow. I shall never experience this moment again.

— Guy de Maupassant

The past attracts me, the present frightens me, because the future is death.

— Guy de Maupassant