Top 50 Colette Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “What a wonderful life I’ve had! I only wish I’d realized it sooner.”

— Colette

2. “I love my past. I love my present. I’m not ashamed of what I’ve had, and I’m not sad because I have it no longer.”

— Colette

3. “You will do foolish things, but do them with enthusiasm.”

— Colette

4. “Hope costs nothing.”

— Colette

5. “A good book is a portal that will take you anywhere in the world.”

— Colette

6. “There are days when solitude is a heady wine that intoxicates you with freedom, others when it is a bitter tonic, and still others when it is a poison that makes you beat your head against the wall.”

— Colette

7. “Our perfect companions never have fewer than four feet.”

— Colette

8. “I want nothing from love, in short, but love.”

— Colette

9. “Music is love in search of a word.”

— Colette

10. “Time spent with a cat is never wasted.”

— Colette

11. “When she raises her eyelids, it’s as if she were taking off all her clothes.”

— Colette

12. “Total absence of humor renders life impossible.”

— Colette

13. “One can’t write of love while making love.”

— Colette

14. “There are no ordinary cats.”

— Colette

15. “The woman who thinks she is intelligent demands equal rights with men. A woman who is intelligent does not.”

— Colette

16. “I did not look for her, because I was afraid of dispelling the mystery we attach to people whom we know only casually.”

— Colette

17. “Live in the moment!”

— Colette

18. “The better we feel about ourselves, the fewer times we have to knock someone down to feel tall.”

— Colette

19. “To a poet, silence is an acceptable response, even a flattering one.”

— Colette

20. “Her nature is like a demonstrative cat’s; she is delicate, acutely sensitive to cold, and incredibly caressing in her ways.”

— Colette

21. “She’s a very mysterious creature, with an open smile and a closed soul.”

— Colette

22. “If there be a true way that leads to the Everlasting Kingdom, it is most certainly that of suffering, patiently endured.”

— Colette

23. “In its early stages, insomnia is almost an oasis in which those who have to think or suffer darkly take refuge.”

— Colette

24. “Lecz kobiecie z trudem przychodzi nie oddac sie mezczyznie.”

— Colette

25. “My eyes, I have filled with Jesus upon Whom I have fixed them at the Elevation of the Host at Holy Mass and I do not wish to replace Him with any other image.”

— Colette

26. “I was changing. Slowly, if you like, but what matter? To change is the great thing.”

— Colette

27. “By associating with the cat, one only risks becoming richer.”

— Colette

28. “Two o’clock already! High time for a woman of letters who has turned out badly to go to sleep.”

— Colette

29. “So now, whenever I despair, I no longer expect my end, but some bit of luck, some commonplace little miracle which, like a glittering link, will mend again the necklace of my days.”

— Colette

30. “Tout m’est egalement odieux.”

— Colette

31. “It is only in pain that a woman is capable of rising above mediocrity. Her resistance to pain is infinite; one can use and abuse it without any fear that she will die, as long as some childish physical cowardice or some religious hope keeps her from the suicide that offers her a way out.”

— Colette

32. “But what is the heart, madame? It’s worth less than people think. it’s quite accommodating, it accepts anything. You give it whatever you have, it’s not very particular. But the body... Ha! That’s something else again! It has a cultivated taste, as they say, it knows what it wants. A heart doesn’t choose, and one always ends up by loving.”

— Colette

33. “Beautiful? For whom? Why, for myself, of course.”

— Colette

34. “Rien d’ailleurs ne rassure autant qu’un masque.”

— Colette

35. “Everything that astonished me when I was young astonishes me even more today. The time will never come for me when there are no more discoveries to make. Every morning the world is as new again and I will not cease to flower except through death.”

— Colette

36. “But though love laughs at difference in age, friendship, especially between two women, is more acutely conscious of it.”

— Colette

37. “The fairies have washed their linen in the water of your dress.”

— Colette

38. “The writer who loses his self-doubt, who gives way as he grows old to a sudden euphoria, to prolixity, should stop writing immediately: the time has come for him to lay aside his pen.”

— Colette

39. “All this is still my kingdom, a small portion of the splendid riches which God distributes to passers-by, to wanderers and to solitaries. The earth belongs to anyone who stops for a moment, gazes and goes on his way; the whole sun belongs to the naked lizard who basks in it.”

— Colette

40. “It is wise to apply the oil of refined politeness to the mechanisms of friendship.”

— Colette

41. “My son, be rich and live your own life! Tell yourself that you’re the incarnation of an ancient aristocracy. Model yourself on the feudal barons. You’re a warrior.”

— Colette

42. “I put on a martyred expression – like this – as if I was bored to death with every luxury under the sun. I had the time of my life.”

— Colette

43. “A woman claims as many native lands as she had happy love affairs, Likewise, she is born under every sky where she recovers from the pain of loving.”

— Colette

44. “Does she deliberately make herself ugly out of modesty or pride?” Brice wondered, watching his wife walk pigeon-toed, run into the corner of the table, and rub her thigh. “It’s a kind of lie, too.”

— Colette

45. “Incompatibility became established between them like a new season of the year.”

— Colette

46. “After you, probably anyone can have me who wants me. A woman, many women. But never another cat.”

— Colette

47. “It is absurd to suppose that periods empty of love are blank pages in a woman’s life. The truth is just the reverse. What remains to be said about a passionate love affair? It can be told in three lines. He loved me, I loved Him. His presence obliterated all other presences. We were happy. Then He stopped loving me and I suffered.”

— Colette

48. “For an instant, Madame Peloux took on her authentic character in her son’s eyes; that is to say, he estimated her at her proper value, a woman high-spirited, all-consuming, calculating and at the same time rash, like a high financier; a woman capable of taking a humorist’s delight in spiteful cruelty. “She is a scourge, certainly,” he said to himself, “and no more. A scourge, but not a stranger.”

— Colette

49. “To write sincerely, almost sincerely! I hope it may bring me relief, that sort of interior silence which follows a sudden utterance, a confession.”

— Colette

50. “I have lived ten years of wild rovings, of conquests and discoveries, in those woods; the day when I have to leave them my heart will be very heavy.”

— Colette