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

I entered literary life as a meteor, and I shall leave it like a thunderbolt." [As quoted in Pol Neveux's introduction, ]

Guy de Maupassant

The great artists are those who impose their personal vision upon humanity.

Guy de Maupassant

Charming, charming,' the lawyer said at intervals.

Guy de Maupassant

Military men are the scourges of the world.

Guy de Maupassant

The essence of life is the smile of round female bottoms, under the shadow of cosmic boredom.

Guy de Maupassant

It is the lives we encounter that make life worth living.

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

Conversation. What is it? A Mystery! It's the art of never seeming bored, of touching everything with interest, of pleasing with trifles, of being fascinating with nothing at all.

Guy de Maupassant

It is the encounters with people that make life worth living.

Guy de Maupassant

I have coveted everything and taken pleasure in nothing

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

Broad daylight does not encourage the apprehension of horror.

Guy de Maupassant

We are, on earth, two distinct races. Those who have need of others, whom others amuse, engage soothe, whom solitude harasses, pains, stupefies, like the movement of a terrible glacier or the traversing of the desert; and those, on the contrary, whom...

Guy de Maupassant

A human being - what is a human being? Everything and nothing. Through the power of thought it can mirror everything it experiences. Through memory and knowledge it becomes a microcosm, carrying the world within itself. A mirror of things, a mirror o...

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

On aime sa mère presque sans le savoir, et on ne prend conscience de toute la profondeur des racines de cet amour qu au moment de la séparation dernière.

Guy de Maupassant

I love the night passionately. I love it as I love my country, or my mistress, with an instinctive, deep, and unshakeable love. I love it with all my senses: I love to see it, I love to breathe it in, I love to open my ears to its silence, I love my ...

Guy de Maupassant

Music, this complex and mysterious act, precise as algebra and vague as a dream, this art made out of mathematics and air, is simply the result of the strange properties of a little membrane. If that membrane did not exist, sound would not exist eith...

Guy de Maupassant

Bientôt la conversation reprit entre les trois dames, que la présence de cette fille avait rendues subitement amies, presque intimes.

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

Entre pauvres gens, faut bien qu'on s'aide ... C'est les grands qui font la guerre.

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