Guy de Maupassant Quotes

1850–1893 France

Henri-René-Albert-Guy de Maupassant (5 August 1850 – 6 July 1893) was a popular 19th-century French writer, one of the fathers of the modern short story.

France
Novelists
Poets
Short story writers

Also known as: Maupassant, Guy de

Random Guy de Maupassant quote

27 quotes

In the East men know panic, but they do not know what fright is.

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

Legitimized love always despises its easygoing brother.

Boule de Suif (1880)

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

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.

Military men are the scourges of the world.

Sur l’eau (1888)

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.

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

And taking her friend's hand, she put it on her breast, on that firm round covering of a woman's heart which the male often finds so satisfying that he makes no attempt to find what lies beneath it.

Le Signe (1886)

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

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

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.

At the end of a short time, once the first terror had subsided, calm was again restored.

Boule de Suif (1880)

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.

For several days in succession fragments of a defeated army had passed through the town.

Boule de Suif (1880)

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.

Sur l’eau (1888)

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

Sur l’eau (1888)

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.

La Parure (The Necklace) (1884)

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

Sur l’eau (1888)

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

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Guy de Maupassant (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.