Jules Renard

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

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

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

Everything you want is out there waiting for you to ask. Everything you want also wants you. But you have to take action to get it.

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

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

The ideal of calm exists in a sitting cat.

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

Words are the small change of thought.

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.

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

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

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

The bourgeois are other people.

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

It is not how old you are, but how you are old.

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

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

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

Talent is a matter of quantity. Talent does not write on page, it writes three hundred.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fame is a constant effort.

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

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

Never does one feel oneself so utterly helpless as in trying to speak comfort for great bereavement. I will not try it. Time is the only comforter for the loss of a mother.

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