Top 150 George Sand Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “There is only one happiness in this life, to love and be loved.”

— George Sand

2. “We cannot tear out a single page of our life, but we can throw the whole book in the fire.”

— George Sand

3. “Work is not man’s punishment. It is his reward and his strength and his pleasure.”

— George Sand

4. “It is love, not faith, that moves mountains.”

— George Sand

5. “The intellect seeks, the heart finds.”

— George Sand

6. “Vanity is the quicksand of reason.”

— George Sand

7. “Simplicity is the essence of the great, the true, and the beautiful in art.”

— George Sand

8. “We must have a passion in life.”

— George Sand

9. “Try to keep your soul young and quivering right up to old age, and to imagine right up to the brink of death that life is only beginning. I think that is the only way to keep adding to one’s talent, and one’s inner happiness.”

— George Sand

10. “Writing a journal means that facing your ocean you are afraid to swim across it, so you attempt to drink it drop by drop.”

— George Sand

11. “Where there is no longer love, there is no longer anything.”

— George Sand

12. “Happiness lies in the consciousness we have of it.”

— George Sand

13. “Simplicity is the most difficult thing to secure in this world; it is the last limit of experience and the last effort of genius.”

— George Sand

14. “The brain is a tool that gets rusty without constant, albeit moderate, exercise.”

— George Sand

15. “It is always the best friends who are neglected and ignored.”

— George Sand

16. “I’m not full of virtues and noble qualities. I love, but I love strongly, exclusive, stedfasty.”

— George Sand

17. “A cigar numbs sorrow and fills the solitary hours with a million gracious images.”

— George Sand

18. “He who draws noble delights from sentiments of poetry is a true poet, though he has never written a line in all his life.”

— George Sand

19. “The world will know and understand me someday. But if that day does not arrive, it does not greatly matter. I shall have opened the way for other women.”

— George Sand

20. “To eat together is one of the greatest promoters of intimacy. It is the satisfaction in common of a material necessity of existence, and if you seek a loftier meaning in it, it is a communion...”

— George Sand

21. “You can bind my body, tie my hands, govern my actions: you are the strongest, and society adds to your power; but with my will, sir, you can do nothing.”

— George Sand

22. “The artist vocation is to send light into the human heart.”

— George Sand

23. “Art for art’s sake is an empty phrase. Art for the sake of truth, art for the sake of the good and the beautiful, that is the faith I am searching for.”

— George Sand

24. “The trade of authorship is a violent, and indestructible obsession.”

— George Sand

25. “God abandons only those who abandon themselves, and whoever has the courage to shut up his sorrow within his own heart is stronger to fight against it than he who complains.”

— George Sand

26. “Believe in no other God than the one who insists on justice and equality among men.”

— George Sand

27. “God has written in the law of nature that when two people are joined in love or friendship, one must always give his heart more perfectly than the other.”

— George Sand

28. “I have no enthusiasm for nature which the slightest chill will not instantly destroy.”

— George Sand

29. “My strength has not equaled my mad ambition. I have remained obscure; I have done worse – I have touched success, and allowed it to escape me.”

— George Sand

30. “Our work can never be better than we are ourselves.”

— George Sand

31. “Let us accept truth, even when it surprises us and alters our views.”

— George Sand

32. “Lying, like license, has its degrees.”

— George Sand

33. “The whole secret of the study of nature lies in learning how to use one’s eyes...”

— George Sand

34. “Nothing resembles selfishness more closely than self-respect.”

— George Sand

35. “Autumn is a melancholy and graceful andante, that prepares beautifully solemn adagio of winter.”

— George Sand

36. “Charity degrades those who receive it and hardens those who dispense it.”

— George Sand

37. “There is only one sex. A man and a woman are so entirely the same thing that one can scarcely understand the subtle reasons for sex distinctions with which our minds are filled.”

— George Sand

38. “Guard well within yourself that treasure, kindness. Know how to give without hesitation, how to lose without regret, how to acquire without meanness.”

— George Sand

39. “You may impose silence upon me, but you can not prevent me from thinking.”

— George Sand

40. “The old woman I shall become will be quite different from the woman I am now. Another I is beginning.”

— George Sand

41. “Unrequited love is as different from the mutual love as the error from the truth.”

— George Sand

42. “Try to keep your soul young and quivering right up to old age.”

— George Sand

43. “To forgive a fault in another is more sublime than to be faultless one’s self.”

— George Sand

44. “I would rather believe that God did not exist than believe that he was indifferent.”

— George Sand

45. “It is a mistake to regard age as a downhill grade toward dissolution. The reverse is true. As one grows older, one climbs with surprising strides.”

— George Sand

46. “It is high time that we had lights that are not incendiary torches.”

— George Sand

47. “A child motivated by competitive ideals will grow into a man without conscience, shame, or true dignity.”

— George Sand

48. “Nowadays it seems that moral education is no longer considered necessary. Attention is wholly centered on intelligence, while the heart life is ignored.”

— George Sand

49. “Not to love is to cease to live.”

— George Sand

50. “One approaches the journey’s end. But the end is a goal, not a catastrophe.”

— George Sand