Quotes by Guy de Maupassant

About Guy de Maupassant:

Henri René Albert Guy de Maupassant 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.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

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

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

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

Guy de Maupassant

Night was a very different matter. It was dense, thicker than the very walls, and it was empty, so black, so immense that within it you could brush against appalling things and feel roaming and prowling around a strange, mysterious horror.

Guy de Maupassant

The kiss itself is immortal. It travels from lip to lip, century to century, from age to age. Men and women garner these kisses, offer them to others and then die in turn.

Guy de Maupassant

Killing is decreed by law but nature loves eternal youth. Whatever she does, however unconscious and unfeeling the act, she seems to cry out: ‘Quick! Quick! Quick!’ And the more she destroys, the more she is renewed.

Guy de Maupassant

But he asked himself now if he would not be disobeying God. And does not God permit love, since He surrounds it with such visible splendor?

Guy de Maupassant

Outside everything was uncannily visible in the light of the full moon, but here in the dark shaded alleys the night was conscious of itself. ("The Moon Slave")

Guy de Maupassant

We have a long distance to travel,' said the Angel of Death to our friend Gil, as soon as they had left the Villa. 'I will order my chariot.' And he struck the ground with his foot. A hollow rumbling, like that which precedes an earthquake, sounded u...

Guy de Maupassant

It was then between one o'clock in the morning and half-past that hour; the sky soon cleared a bit before me, and the lunar crescent peeped out from behind the clouds - that sad crescent of the last quarter of the moon. The crescent of the new moon, ...

Guy de Maupassant

It came at last. "'Dr. Graham, tell me,' she asked tremulously, 'do you believe that prayers - wicked unreasonable prayers - are granted?' He helped himself to another slice of bread-and-butter before answering. 'Well-' he said slowly, 'it seems hard...

Guy de Maupassant

Madeleine in her turn stared at him steadily, straight into his eyes, in a profound, strange way, as if seeking to read something there, as if seeking to discover there that hidden part of a human being which can never be fathomed but may perhaps be ...

Guy de Maupassant

Everything I see reminds me that in a few days I shall no longer see it... It's horrible... I shall see nothing more... nothing of what exists... the smallest objects that we use... glasses... plates... beds where people sleep so comfortably... carri...

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

The only certainty is death.

Guy de Maupassant

In fact living is dying.

Guy de Maupassant

Envy, bitter envy, was permeating his soul drop by drop, like a poison that tainted all his pleasures and made his life hateful.

Guy de Maupassant

Get married, my friend, you don't know what it means to live alone, at my age. Nowadays feeling alone fills me with appalling anguish; being alone at home, by the fire, in the evening. It seems to me then that I'm alone on the earth, dreadfully alone...

Guy de Maupassant

It was one of those bitter mornings when the whole of nature is shiny, brittle, and hard, like crystal. The trees, decked out in frost, seem to have sweated ice; the earth resounds beneath one's feet; the tiniest sounds carry a long way in the dry ai...

Guy de Maupassant

Yes, this is the only good thing in life: love! To hold a woman you love in your arms! That is the ultimate in human happiness.

Guy de Maupassant

It was one of those feminine faces whose every line has its own particular charm, and seems to possess a meaning, whose every movement seems to reveal or to conceal something.

Guy de Maupassant

Author Bio

  • NameGuy de Maupassant
  • DescriptionFrench writer
  • AliasesHenri René Albert Guy de Maupassant
  • BornAugust 5, 1850
  • DiedJuly 6, 1893
  • CountryFrance
  • ProfessionShort Story Writer; Playwright; Journalist; Novelist