Jules renard quotes

I find that when I do not think of myself I do not think at all.

If you are afraid of being lonely, don't try to be right.

Look for the ridiculous in everything and you will find it.

Failure is not our only punishment for laziness; there is also the success of others.

There are moments when everything goes well, but don't be frightened.

Dreaming is to think by moonlight by the light of an inner moon.

Fame is a constant effort

Words should be only the clothes, carefully custom-made to fit the thought.

I finally know what distinguishes man from the other beasts: financial worries.

Don't tell a woman she's pretty; tell her there's no other woman like her, and all roads will open to you.

There are no friends; only moments of friendship.

The strong do not hesitate. They settle down, they sweat, they go on to the end. They exhaust the ink, they use up the paper.

Style is to forget all styles.

Acting of some actors seems natural, because they have no talent.

To succeed you must add water to your wine, until there is no more wine.

Words are the coins making up the currency of sentences, and there are always too many small coins.

I have a remarkable memory; I forget everything. It is wonderfully convenient. It is as though the world were constantly renewing itself for me.

To have a horror of the bourgeois is bourgeois.

As I grow to understand life less and less, I learn to love it more and more.

Paradise does not exist, but we must nonetheless strive to be worthy of it.

A cold in the head causes less suffering than an idea.

The ideal of calm exists in a sitting cat.

There is nothing like literature: I lose a cow, I write about her death, and my writing pays me enough to buy another cow.

Love is like an hourglass, with the heart filling up as the brain empties.

Posterity! Why should people be less stupid tomorrow than they are today?

An optimist is a driver who thinks that empty space at the curb won't have a hydrant beside it.

We must be greater than God, for we have to undo His injustice.

The story I am writing exists, written in absolutely perfect fashion, some place, in the air. All I must do is find it, and copy it.

Talent is like money; you don't have to have some to talk about it.

Whenever I have talked to anyone at too great length, I am like a man who has drunk too much, and ashamed, doesn't know where to put himself.

Clarity is the politeness of the man of letters.

Wrinkles are engraved smiles.

It is more difficult to be an honorable man for a week than to be a hero for fifteen minutes.

If one were to build the house of happiness, the largest space would be the waiting room.

The horse is the only animal into which one can bang nails.

To think is not enough, you must think of something.

Laziness is nothing more than the habit of resting before you get tired.

God does not believe in our God.

Truth makes many appeals, not the least of which is its power to shock.

The less I understand life, the more I live it!

Man who waits for roast duck to fly into mouth must wait very, very long time.

Being bored is an insult to oneself.

The void yields up nothing. You have to be a great poet to make it ring.

I am not sincere, even when I say I am not.

Literature is an occupation in which you have to keep proving your talent to people who have none

If I had my life to live over again, I would ask that not a thing be changed, but that my eyes be opened wider.

An egotist always resents meeting another egotist as if he alone had the right to be one.

It astounds us to come upon other egoists, as though we alone had the right to be selfish, and to be filled with eagerness to live.

How describe the delicate thing that happens when a brilliant insect alights on a flower? Words, with their weight, fall upon the picture like birds of prey.

In morals, always do as others do; in art, never.

It is easy for a somebody to be modest, but it is difficult to be modest when one is a nobody.

We spend our lives talking about this mystery. Our life.

Some people are so boring that they make you waste an entire day in five minutes.

Broken china lasts longer than unbroken.

We are ignorant of the Beyond because this ignorance is the condition of our own life. Just as ice cannot know fire except by melting and vanishing.

The danger of success is that it makes us forget the world's dreadful injustice.

Style means the right word. The rest matters little.

The only man who is really free is the one who can turn down an invitation to dinner without giving an excuse.

I am never bored; to be bored is an insult to one's self.

Socialism must come down from the brain and reach the heart.

Let us stay at home: there we are decent. Let us not go out: our defects wait for us at the door, like flies.

Add two letters two paris and it's paradise.

Writing is the only profession where no one considers you ridiculous if you earn no money.

How many people have wanted to kill themselves, and have been content with tearing up their photograph!

The profession of letters is, after all, the only one in which one can make no money without being ridiculous.

Somewhere in the shadow cast by every famous man is a feminine victim.

In literature, there are only oxen. The biggest ones are the geniuses-the ones who toil eighteen hours a day without tiring.

We are in the world to laugh. In purgatory or in hell we shall no longer be able to do so. And in heaven it would not be proper.

Only in this world do we laugh: in hell, it won't be possible; and in heaven, it won't be proper.

I am afraid I shall not find him, but I shall still look for him, for if he exists, he may be appreciative of my efforts.

It is when we are faced with death that we turn most bookish.

Be modest! It is the kind of pride least likely to offend.

When the defects of others are perceived with so much clarity, it is because one possesses them oneself.

We are so happy to advise others that occasionally we even do it in their interest.

Art: to nudge truth along a little.

On earth there is no heaven, but there are pieces of it.

I don't know if God exists, but it would be better for His reputation if He didn't.

At the bottom of all patriotism there is war: that is why I am no patriot.

It is in the midst of the city that one writes the most inspiring pages about the country.

Our dream dashes itself against the great mystery like a wasp against a window pane. Less merciful than man, God never opens the window.

Life is what our character makes it. We fashion it, as a snail does its shell. A man can say: I never made a fortune because it is not in my character to be rich.

A beautiful line of verse has twelve feet, and two wings.

God, he whom everyone knows, by name.

There are places and moments in which one is so completely alone that one sees the world entire.

Words are the small change of thought.

The reward of great men is that, long after they have died, one is not quite sure that they are dead

We don't understand life any better at forty than at twenty, but we know it and admit it

You can recover from the writing malady only by falling mortally ill and dying.

Writing is the best way to talk without being interrupted.

There is a justice, but we do not always see it. Discreet, smiling, it is there, at one side, a little behind injustice, which makes a big noise.

Liberty is the right to choose. Freedom is the result of the right choice.

The truly free man is he who can decline a dinner invitation without giving an excuse.

It doesn't pay to say too much when you are mad enough to choke. For the word that stings the deepest is the word that is never spoke, Let the other fellow wrangle till the storm has blown away, then he'll do a heap of thinking about the things you didn't say.

Do not ask me to be kind; just ask me to act as though I were.

If money does not make you happy, give it back

The bourgeois are other people.

When I think of all the books still left for me to read, I am certain of further happiness.

In the most complete friendship there is always a little empty space, like the space in an egg.

Those moments when you feel you want to read something truly beautiful. The eyes make a tour of the library, and there is nothing. Then you decide to take no matter what, and it is full of beautiful things.

It is not enough to be happy, it is also necessary that others not be.

Writing is a way of talking without being interrupted.

Talent is a question of quantity. Talent does not write one page; it writes three hundred.

Walks. The body advances, while the mind flutters around it like a bird.

I have no religion,’ says Borneau, ‘but I respect the religion of others. Religion is sacred.’ Why this privilege, this immunity?... A believer creates God in his own image; if he is ugly, his God will be morally ugly. Why should moral ugliness be respectable?

if I were to begin my life again, I should want it as it was. I would only open my eyes a little more.