291 quotes found
"It is quite certain that in seeing the people who treat us so well despite their own misfortune, we are more obliged than ever to work hard for their happiness. The king seems to understand this truth; as for myself, I know that in my whole life (even if I live for a hundred years) I shall never forget the day of the coronation."
"We had a beautiful dream and that was all. The interest of my son is the only guide I have, and whatever happiness I could achieve by being free of this place I cannot consent to separate my self from him. I could not have any pleasure in the world if I abandoned my children.I do not even have any regrets."
"Courage! I have shown it for years; think you I shall lose it at the moment when my sufferings are to end?"
"Madame d'Adhémar, here is another missive from my unknown. Have you not heard people talking again of the Comte de St.--Germain?... This time, the oracle has used the language which becomes him, the epistle is in verse; it may be bad, but it is not very cheering. You shall read it at your leisure...The unknown says the same as you do; but who is wrong or right?'"
"What do you make of these threatening verses?... Pray heaven you speak truly, Madame d’Adhémar, however, these are strange experiences. Who is this personage who has taken an interest in me for so many years without making himself known, without seeking any reward, and who yet has always told me the truth? He now warns me of the overthrow of everything that exists and, if he gives a gleam of hope, it is so distant that I may not reach it... You fancy that I possess credit or power in our Salon. You are mistaken; I had the misfortune to believe that a Queen was permitted to have friends. The consequence is that all try to rule me, or to use me for their own personal advantage. I am the centre of a crowd of intrigues, which I have difficulty in avoiding."
"The King of Prussia is innately a bad neighbor, but the English will also always be bad neighbors to France, and the sea has never prevented them from doing her great mischief."
"No harm will come to me. The Assembly is prepared to treat us leniently."
"I have come, Sire, to complain of one of your subjects who has been so audacious as to kick me in the belly."
"We made our entrance into Paris. As for honors, we received all that we could possibly imagine; but they, though very well in their way, were not what touched me most. What was really affecting was the tenderness and earnestness of the poor people, who, in spite of the taxes with which they are overwhelmed, were transported with joy at seeing us."
"In a month’s time, I shall be able to give your Majesty news of the Comtesse de Provence, for the marriage is fixed for May 14th; they had prepared many fetes for this marriage, but now they are economising in them for want of money."
"Pardon me, sir, I did not do it on purpose."
"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then the dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she just began to move in,—glittering like the morning star, full of life and splendor, and joy. Oh! what a revolution! and what a heart must I have, to contemplate without emotion that elevation and that fall! Little did I dream when she added titles of veneration to those of enthusiastic, distant, respectful love, that she should ever be obliged to carry the sharp antidote against disgrace concealed in that bosom; little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fallen upon her in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honour and of cavaliers. I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards to avenge even a look that threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone.—That of sophisters, economists; and calculators has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is extinguished forever."
"[Her] rumored tribadism had historically specific political implications. Consider her final (fictive) testimony in The Confession of Marie-Antoinette: 'People!' she protests, 'because I ceded to the sweet impressions of nature, and in imitating the charming weakness of all the women of the court of France, I surrendered to the sweet impulsion of love...you hold me, as it were, captive within your walls?'""
"O Liberté, que de crimes on commet en ton nom!"
"I have been reading Madame Roland's memoirs and have come to the conclusion that she was a very over-rated woman; snobbish, vain, sentimental, envious — rather a German type. Her last days before her execution were spent in chronicling petty social snubs or triumphs of many years back. She was a democrat chiefly from envy of the noblesse."
"His [ Edouard Manet's] paintings, as they always do, produce the impression of a wild or even a somewhat unripe fruit. I do not in the least dislike them."
"Men readily believe that they will fill a whole life; but for my part, I believe that however fond one is of one's husband, one does not relinquish a life of work without some difficulty; affection is a very pretty thing provided it is coupled with something to fill one's day; that something, for you, I see as motherhood."
"He [ Manet ] begged me to go straight up and see his painting [ 'Le Balcon'] - Berthe was model for this painting], as he was rooted to the spot. I've never seen anyone in such a state, one minute he was laughing, the next insisting his picture was dreadful; in the next breath, sure it would be a huge success."
"The tall fellow Bazille has done something I find quite fine: a young girl [in his painting 'View on the village' ] in a very light dress in the shadow of a tree beyond which one sees a town. There is a good deal of light, sunlight, He is trying to do what we [Berthe and her sister Edma] have so often tried to bring off: to paint a figure in the open air. This time I think he has succeed."
"He [Manet] came about one o'clock [the day for submitting works for The Paris Salon of 1870]. he found it [ 'Reading', Berthe's double-portrait of her mother with her pregnant sister Edma] very good, except for the lower parts of the dress. He took the brushes and put in a few accents.. ..mother was in ecstasies. That is where my misfortune began. Once started, nothing could stop him, from the skirt he went to the bust, from the bust to the head, from the head to the background. He cracked a thousand jokes, laughed like a madman, handed me the palette, took it back; finally by five o'clock in the afternoon we had made the best caricature you have ever seen."
"Corot spoiled the 'étude' [study] we admired so much when we saw it at his home, by redoing it in the studio."
"I will achieve it only [being an artist] by perseverance, and by openly asserting my determination to emancipate myself, [but].. ..I both lament and envy your [Edma's] fate. Bichette [her niece] helps me to understand maternal love; she comes onto my bed every morning and plays so sweetly.. ..life gets more complicated by the day here now I am gripped by the desire to have children, that' all I need."
"During the day I received a visit from Puvis de Chavannes; he saw what I had done [painted in 1869-70 in Lorient] and didn't seem to think it was too bad.. ..The Manet's [the brothers Eduard and Eugene Manet] came to see us [Berthe and her mother] Tuesday evening, we visited the studio; to my great surprise and satisfaction I received the highest praise. it seems that what I do is decidedly better than Eva Gonzalès. Manet is too candid, and there can be no mistake about it. I am sure that he liked these things a great deal; however, I remember what Fantin says, namely, that Manet always approves of the painting of people whom he likes."
"I have heard so much about the perils ahead that I have had nightmares for several nights, in which I lived through all the horrors of war.. .The militia are quartered in the studio, hence there is no way of using it. I do not read the newspapers much any more; one a day is enough for me. The Prussian atrocities upset me, and I want to retain my composure.. .Would you believe that I am accustomed to the sound of the canon [of the Prussians]? It seems to me that I am now absolutely inured to war and capable of enduring everything."
"This painting, this work you miss so much [the two sisters Morisot painted a lot together] is a cause of much trouble and concern, you know this as well as I do and yet, child that you are, you are already weeping for the loss of the very thing that darkened you mood only recently. Think of it, yours is not the very worst lot: you have a real affection, a devoted heart that is yours an yours alone, do not be ungrateful for the dealings of fate, think of the great sorrow that is solitude; whatever anyone says or does, womankind has immense need of affection; to want to retreat into yourself is to attempt the impossible."
"The stories of the Manet brothers [ Edouard and her future husband Eugène Manet ] tell about all the horrors we are likely to face, they [in Paris, during the war between France and Germany] are almost enough to discourage even the bravest of us. [But] you know they [the Manet brothers] always exaggerate, and at the moment they see everything in the blackest possible light."
"It seems to me a painting [she is working on] like the one I gave Manet ['The Harbour at Lorient'] could perhaps sell, and that is all I care about."
"He [ Manet ] holds up that eternal Mademoiselle Gonzales as an example; she has poise, perseverance, she can get her things finished whereas I am incapable of doing anything properly. In the meantime he [Manet] has started her portrait again, for the twenty-fifth time. She poses every day, and every night he rubs out the head.."
"I do not like this place [ Saint-Jean-de-Luz, a small fishing-village on the Spanish border]. I find it arid and dried up. The sea here is ugly. It is either all blue - I hate it like that - or dark and dull."
"There is constant sun, good weather all the time, the ocean like a slab of slate - there is nothing less picturesque than this combination."
"I am keen to earn some money.. ..beginning to lose all hope.. .What I see most clearly is that my situation in impossible from every point of view."
"I have found an honest and excellent man [ Eugène Manet, brother of Edouard Manet ] who, I believe, sincerely loves me. I have entered into the positive life after having lived for a long time in by chimeras."
"..the glimpse of the dome of St. Paul's through the forest of yellow masts, the whole thing bathed in a golden haze."
"Dear sir, Edouard Manet told me that you were kind enough to bring the sketch that you completed of him [Monet painted Manet in his garden, Argenteuil, Summer 1874]. I did not have the time to thank you before leaving Paris [with Eugene Manet, just married]. I treasure your gift all the more because I attribute much value to what you do. My husband and I, when we look out at the English seascapes which around us, often speak of you talent and what you will achieve from this movement.......[unreadable – about the Impressionists?]."
"My work is going badly.. ..it is always the same story: I don't know where to start. I made an attempt in a field, but the moment I had set up my easel more than fifty boys and girls were swarming about me, shouting and gesticulating. On a boat one has another kind of difficulty. Everything sways, there is an infernal lap of water; one has the sun and the wind to cope with; the boats change position every minute, etc.. .The view from my window is pretty to look at, but not to paint. Views from above are almost always incomprehensible; as a result of all this I am not doing much.."
"If you read some of the Parisian newspapers, among others the 'Figaro', so beloved of the right-thinking public, you must have learned that I am part of a group of artists who opened a private exhibition [in the art-gallery of Durand-Ruel in Paris, April 1876]. You must also have seen what favour this exhibition enjoys in the eyes of these gentlemen [Berthe refers to the critical articles in Paris with all their mockery about her works]. On the other hand, we have been praised in the radical newspaper, but you don't read those [her aunts]! Well, at least we are getting attention, and we have enough self-esteem not to care. My brother-in-law Edouard Manet is not with us [Manet didn't participate in this first Impressionist show, initiated by Degas ]. Speaking of success, he [Manet] has just been rejected by the Salon; he, too, is perfectly good-humored about his failure."
"The love of art.. ..reconciles us to our lined faces and white hear. [Berthe Morisot was 40 years then]"
"The touch, sure and light [is] fixing something of the passing moment.. ..memory is the true, imperishable life, that which has sunk without trace and been forgotten was not worth experiencing, the sweet hours, and the great and dread, are immutable. Dreams are life itself – and dreams are more true than reality; in them we behave as our true selves – if we have a soul it is there."
"I can not get over everything you did for me in that first day [for his support to hang her works on the 7th Impressionist exhibition, Spring 1882], it seems to me that you are working yourself to death, and all on my account. This touches me deeply and vexes me at the same time."
"These last days [of Manet, dying] were very painful. Poor Edouard suffered atrociously. His agony was horrible, death in one of its most appealing forms, that I once again witnessed at a very close range. If you add to these almost physical emotions my old bond of friendship with Edouard, a entire past of youth and work suddenly ending, you will know that I am devastated."
"I think that it will be a great success, that all this painting [of Edouard Manet, shortly after his death], so fresh, so vital, will electrify the 'Palais des Beaux Arts' [in Paris], which is accustomed to dead art. It will be the revenge for so many rebuffs, but a revenge that the poor boy only in his grave."
"It is odd that Edouard [Manet] with his reputation as an innovator, who has survived such storms of criticism, should suddenly be seen as a classicist. It just proves the imbecility of the public, for he has always been a classic painter."
"This project [an Impressionist exhibition in Paris] is very much up in the air. Degas' perversity makes it almost impossible of realization; there are clashes of vanity in this little group [of impressionists] that make any understanding difficult. It seems to me that I am the only one without any pettiness of character. This makes up for my inferiority as a painter.. ..the truth is that our value [of woman] lies in feeling, in intuition, in our vision that is subtler than that of men, and we can accomplish a great deal provided that affectation, pedantry and sentimentalism do not come to spoil everything."
"..scumbled froth.. ..capable of indicating a mouth, eyes, a nose with a single stroke of the brush, the rest of the face modeled by the perfect accuracy of these indications."
"Would you do us the great favour, you and Mademoiselle Geneviève, of coming to dine next Thursday? Monet will be there, Renoir also.."
"As I admired it [a red pencil and chalk drawing by Degas of a young mother, nursing her child] he showed me a whole series done from the same model and with the same sort of rhythm. He is a draughtsman of the first order; it would be interesting to show all these preparatory studies for a painting to the public, which generally imagines that the impressionists work in a very casual way. I do not think it possible to go further in the rendering of form."
"He [Renoir] is a subtle and brilliant draughtsman.. ..all these preliminary drawings [in Renoir's studio] would astonish the public who obviously imagine the 'Impressionists' work at tremendous speed. I don't believe one can go further [in making sketches as studies] than this in the study of form in a drawing. I am charmed by his 'Nude Bathers' quite as much as those by Ingres. He [Renoir] tells me that he thinks the nude is absolutely indispensable as an art form."
"I have descended to the depths of suffering, and it seems to me that after that one cannot help being raised up. But I have spent the last three nights weeping. Pity! Pity! Remembrance is the true imperishable life.. .I should like to live my life over again, to record it, to admit my weaknesses; no, this is useless; I have sinned, I have suffered, I have atoned for it. I could write only a bad novel by relating what has been related a thousand times."
"Another stroll along the quays with Julie asking questions all the time. We stood for a long time examining the sun and the planet at a mapmaker's.. ..There in the Tuileries Gardens.. ..sitting down I began to ponder over my painting of the garden, watching the shadows on the sand and on the roof of the Louvre, and trying to find the relationship between light and shade. Julie saw pink in the light and purple in the shadows."
"I do not think any man would ever treat a woman as his equal, and it is all I ask because I know my worth."
"Your phrase: 'I am working hard at growing old', is absolutely me. What if you were always to speak in my place.."
"I saw the passers-by on the avenue clearly and simply, in the way they are in Japanese prints [she saw some earlier, together with Mary Casatt in the 'Ecole des Beaux Arts', Paris]. I was thrilled, I knew definitely why I had been painting badly and why I would never paint that way again. I mean to say, I am fifty years old and once a year at least I have the same joy and the same hope."
"I say, 'I should like to die', but that's not true at all, I should like to get younger.. ..youth and old age are similar in more ways than one, and they are the two moments in life when one can feel one's own soul which would be a proof that it exists."
"With what resignation we arrive at the end of life, resigned to all its failures on the one hand, all its uncertainties on the other, for so long I have hoped for nothing, and the desire for glorification after death seems to me an overblown ambition; my own ambition has been confined to a desire to fix something of all that passes, oh! Something, the least little thing, well! That ambition, too, is overblown."
"My dearest little Julie, I love you as I lie dying; I shall still love you when I am dead. I beg of you, do not cry; this parting was inevitable. I would have liked to be with you until you married – Work hard and be good as you have always been; you have never caused me a moment's sorrow in you little life [Julie is 16, then]. You have beauty, good fortune; use them well. I think the best thing would be to live with your cousins in the Rue de Villejust, but I do not wish to force you to do anything. Give a memento of me to your aunt Edma [Berthe's sister] , and to your cousins too; and give Monet's [painting] 'Bateaux en reparation' to your cousin Gabriel. Tell M. Degas that if he found a museum he is to choose a Manet [of her Manet paintings]. A keepsake for Monet; one for Renoir, and one of my drawings for Bartolomé. Give something to the two concierges. Do not cry, I love you more than I can tell you."
"Music and painting should never be literary, a very subtle distinction according to Renoir. As soon as I try to represent an individual, their physiognomy and attitudes, I become a literary artist."
"My ambition is limited to capturing something transient."
"They [the sisters Berthe and Edma ] will become painters. Are you fully aware of what that means? It will be revolutionary – I would almost say catastrophic – in your bourgeois society. Are you sure you won't curse Art, because once it is allowed into such a respectable and serene household, it will surely end by dictating the destinies of your two children."
"Since it is not necessary to have had a long training in draughtsmanship at the Academy to paint a copper pot, a candlestick and a bunch of radishes, women succeed quite well in this domestic type of painting. Miss Berthe Morisot brings to the task really a great deal of frankness with a delicate feeling for light and colour."
"There are works for exhibition, others for the studio, you need to follow the public's taste if you want to succeed.. ..with some works you make your reputation with the artists, with others you do good business if possible"
"I would also point out two landscapes by Mesdemoiselles Morisot, - doubtless two sisters [Berthe and Edma]. Corot is sure to be their master. These canvases show a freshness and naivety of expression and atmosphere that provided some respite from the suave, mean-minded work lapped up with such enthusiasm by the crowds. The artists must have painted these studies quite deliberately on the spot [in open-air] determined to reproduce what they saw."
"I quite agree with you, the Mademoiselles Morisot are charming. What a pity they are not men. All the same, they could serve the cause of painting, in their capacity of women, by each marrying an academician and bringing trouble to those old bogeys in the enemy-camp. Or perhaps that's asking too much sacrifice."
"I am often with you, my dear Berthe, in my thoughts. I follow you everywhere in your studio and I wish that I could escape, were it only for one quarter of an hour to breathe again that air in which we lived for many years."
"We also consider that Miss Berthe Morisot's name and talent are too important to us to do without."
"If possible, come and take care of the placing [for the first Impressionist painting show of Spring 1876, in the art-gallery of Durand-Ruel in Paris, with nineteen pictures of Berthe Morisot]. We are planning to hang the works of each painter in the group together, separating them from any others as much as possible.. .. please, do come and direct this."
"Drawn more to rendering the appearance of things with marked economy of means, infusing them with the fresh charm of feminine vision, Mlle Berthe Morisot succeeds marvelously in capturing the intimate presence of a modern woman or child, in the quintessential atmosphere of a beach or grassy lawn.. .We feel as if the charming woman and child are completely unaware that their pose.. ..is being perpetuated in this charming watercolor."
"There is also, as in all famous gangs, a woman. Her name is Berthe Morisot, and she is a curiosity. She manages to convey a certain degree of feminine grace in spite of her outbursts of delirium."
"There is only one impressionist among the group of revolutionaries Impressionists, and that is Berthe Morisot.. .Her painting has all the freedom of improvisation, truly the 'impression' experienced by a sincere, honest eye, rendered by a hand that does not cheat."
"She uses pastel with the freedom and charm that Rosalba Carriera first brought to the medium in the eighteenth century.. .Here is a delicate colorist who succeeds in making everything cohere into an overall harmony of shades of white which it is difficult to orchestrate without lapsing into sentimentality."
"..'new charm, infused by feminine vision'"
"Her watercolors, her pastels, her paintings all show.. ..a light touch and unpretentious allure that we can only admire. Mademoiselle Morisot has an extraordinary sensitive eye..[and].. succeeds in capturing fleeting notes on her canvases, with a delicacy, spirit, and skill that ensure her a prominent place at the center of the impressionists' group."
"[Berthe Morisot] always painted standing up, walking back and forth before the canvas. She would stare at her subject for a long time (and her look was piercing), her hand ready to place her brushstrokes just where she wanted them.. ..[her method was] to start with a light pencil-sketch, to repeat or very the theme in sanguine, to remodel the composition in pastel and, quite often, to carry forward the theme in watercolor and occasionally to carry it to a final culmination in a finished oil."
"Take this book, when violet Dawn Rises over the Wood To the house of Madame Eugène Manet To the road of far-away Villejust, number 40"
"My dear Berthe, I have indeed just received a visit from the dreaded Pissarro who spoke about your next [groups-]exposition. The gentlemen don't seem to be able to agree [the exposing artists]. Gauguin is playing the great dictator. Sisley, who – I also saw, would like to know what Monet should do [participating or not]. As for Renoir, he hasn't yet returned to Paris. I am surprised Eugène [Manet -the brother of Edouard and husband of Berthe] did not remember that it was very cold in Florence – we shivered there for two months once before.."
"Berthe Morisot is disturbing. In her exquisite works there is a morbid curiosity that astonishes and charmes. Morisot seems to paint with her nerves on edge, providing a few scanty traces to create complete disquieting evocations."
"If I may put it in these terms, she [Berthe Morisot] eliminates cumbersome epithets, weightily adverbs, in her clear phrasing: everything is subject and verb; she has a kind of telegrammatic style with sparkling, polished vocabulary.."
"[the light] seems to break as if by force through a limpid crystal glass or block of ice. It retains its tender blue, and its green embers, it acquires a fragile brilliance, it radiates with fresh palpitations, shimmering and sparkling.. .The whole canvas is phosphorescent with the great brilliance of marine light pouring in from outside.. ..this clear brilliance that traverses the walls, harmonizes the colors, animates vague forms with strange life, is rediscovered wherever Mme Morisot has left her personal mark."
"A small woman in white, wearing a delicate knitted cap, looks at herself in a small hand-held mirror; she is sitting on a sofa, also white, silhouetted against a white muslin curtain through which the light passes, playing deliciously over the whole symphony of white, and the effect of the back-lighting creates astonishing shades of gray. Such difficulty overcome with such charm [in the painting 'Jeune Femme au miroir / Young Woman at Her Looking Glass', Berthe Morisot painted in 1876]."
"Before my eyes, she made a charming portrait of Mlle Marguerite Carré in a pink dress, pale pink, the whole canvas was pale. Berthe Morisot was already very much herself, eliminating shadows and half-tones from the natural scene.. ..She touched her canvas like the bloom of a cheek, treating a millstone, a suburban poplar tree, a mouth, or a tulle scarf all alike.. ..I should like to believe that she perhaps suggested, to Claude Monet or Sisley, that a Parisian view or the landscape around Paris, a garden, a railway bridge, poppies in a pale field of oats.. .. were painterly motifs.."
"She wanted it [the studio] not facing north, but full south; the light is diffused through cream-colored blinds; there is not a dark corner to be seen. The daffodils, tulips, and peonies in vases stand out against a bright background, with their transparent flesh, the flat, uniform modeling of objects and faces before a window. Lighting such as this reputedly drains a scene of color; but I do not believe that before Berthe Morisot, any artist deliberately, invariably painted in the absence of effect – by which I mean suppressing the oppositions of shade and half-tones and choosing to highlight a figure by the apposition of color of the same bright value."
"Berthe Morisot's uniqueness way to 'live' her painting, and to paint her life.. ..she took up, put down, returned to her brush like a thought that comes to us, is clean forgotten, then occurs to us once again. It is this that gives her work the very particular charm of a close, almost indissoluble connection between the artist's ideal and the intimacy of an individual life."
"It is made of nothing, a nothingness multiplied by the supreme art of her touch, the merest touch of mist, a hint of swans, the quick touch of a brush barely rubbing the fabric. This gentle brushing gives us everything: the time of day, the season, and the knowledge, the promptitude which that confers, the great gift of reducing things to their essence, of lightening matter to the extreme and, through that, of taking the impression of the workings of the mind to its highest degree."
"Until her death, when I was sixteen, we were always together [she and her mother Berthe]. I was very spoiled. It was almost as if my mother knew she wouldn't live for very long; she looked after me, painted me and drew me, with all her strength and tenderness."
"It was Corot, [c. 1860-1864] who taught her [Berthe Morisot] to bathe in air her landscapes, her figures, her still-life compositions; it was he who taught her the difficult lesson of understanding values."
"Berthe Morisot's place in art history has been shaped by a specific legacy of admiration and family curator-ship.. .. -that her art was truly impressionist because it was so truly 'feminine'-.. ..[so] she was damned by the very terms in which she had once been so enthusiastically acclaimed."
"..For all that, Berthe Morisot has been misunderstood. Her life has rapidly taken on the mantle of myth. It is a charming myth, originating with the critic of Théodore Duret, but elaborated by Paul Valéry, the renowned philosopher, critic, essayist and poet and her nephew by marriage. Indeed it is a magical myth, perpetuated by friends, relatives and descendants for the best part of a century."
"Edma painted a portrait of Berthe the artist about this time [1860-61]. It is not only a sisterly dedication, it is an important statement. Berthe stands before her easel, her right hand central to the picture, poised to touch her palette with a brush. The pretty round-faced girl had vanished."
"A painter of women, and a women herself, Berthe Morisot imbued her female models with all the charm, all the sensuality, all the tender lightness of being that characterize her own vision, communicated through her work.. .It falls to us to recognize that beyond its tender charm and femininity [frequently expressed by art-critics in her time], her work is well structured, constantly searching for greater subtlety of expression; and that its superficial appearance, however delightful and attractive, simultaneously hides and reveals a depth concealed form over-hasty eyes by discretion and diffidence alone."
"He will soon be claiming that the Resistance has liberated the world."
"There is nothing more comfortable than a caterpillar and nothing more made for love than a butterfly. We need dresses that crawl and dresses that fly. Fashion is at once a caterpillar and a butterfly, caterpillar by day, butterfly by night"
"Fashion is made to become unfashionable."
"How many cares one loses when one decides not to be something, but to be someone."
"In 1919 I woke up famous. I'd never guessed it. If I'd known I was famous, I'd have stolen away and wept. I was stupid. I was supposed to be intelligent. I was sensitive and very dumb."
"Youth is something very new: Twenty years ago no one mentioned it."
"Fashion is architecture. It is a matter of proportions."
"Nothing is ugly as long as it is alive."
"In order to be irreplaceable one must always be different."
"As long as you know that most men are like children, you know everything."
"Women think of all colors except the absence of color. I have said that black has it all. White too. Their beauty is absolute. It is the perfect harmony."
"Fashion is not something that exists in dresses only. Fashion is in the sky, in the street, fashion has to do with ideas, the way we live, what is happening."
"Success is often achieved by those who don't know that failure is inevitable."
"The most courageous act is still to think for yourself. Aloud."
"Fashion fades, only style remains the same."
"Don't spend time beating on a wall, hoping to transform it into a door."
"Ask me who I don't dress!"
"I was a rebellious child, a rebellious lover, a rebellious couturière — a real devil."
"A girl should be two things: classy and fabulous."
"The best colour in the whole world is the one that looks good on you."
"Chanel, General De Gaulle and Picasso are the three most important figures of our time."
"Throughout her long life, Chanel moved between two worlds, one real the other imaginary. Unloved, she lived for love. Despite her countless conquests, from English noblemen to Russian dukes, she spent years alone, work her only solace."
"Despite the work of a dozen biographers … Chanel remains an enigma."
"Women had to work like slaves in the art world, but a lot of men got to the top through their charm. And it hurt them. To be young and pretty didn't help a woman in the art world, because the social scene, and the buying scene, was in the hands of women – women who had money. They wanted male artists who would come alone and be their charming guests. Rothko could be very charming. It was a court. And the artist buffoons came to the court to entertain, to charm. Now it has changed, now the younger men are in – older women and younger men."
"Art is a guaranty of sanity."
"I have drawn my whole life. My parents were in the tapestry restoration business, and as a young girl, I would draw in the missing parts of the tapestry that needed to be re-woven. My ability to draw made me indispensable to my parents."
"At the dinner table when I was very little, I would hear people bickering – the father saying something, the mother choosing to defend herself. To escape the bickering, I started modelling the soft bread with my fingers. With the dough of the French bread – sometimes it was still warm – I would make little figures. And I would line them up on the table and this was really my first sculpture."
"England is very, very important to me, because in my family the English could do no wrong. When my father picked a mistress, it was always an English girl: if he made her pregnant, she could be shipped back to England and he would not be held responsible. It never happened, but I've made a lot of work called The English Can Do No Wrong."
"I do not need the musing of the philosophers to tell me what I am doing. It would be more interesting to let me know why I am doing it."
"The feminists took me as a role model, as a mother. It bothers me. I am not interested in being a mother. I am still a girl trying to understand myself."
"What modern art means is that you have to keep finding new ways to express yourself, to express the problems, that there are no settled ways, no fixed approach. This is a painful situation, and modern art is about this painful situation of having no absolutely definite way of expressing yourself."
"I came from a family of repairers. The spider is a repairer. If you bash into the web of a spider, she doesn't get mad. She weaves and repairs it."
"I became aware of Louise Bourgeois in my first or second year at Brighton Art College. One of my teachers, Stuart Morgan, curated a small retrospective of her work at the Serpentine, and both he and another teacher, Edward Allington, saw something in her, and me, and thought I should be aware of her. I thought the work was wonderful. It was her very early pieces, The Blind Leading the Blind, the wooden pieces and some of the later bronze works. Biographically, I don't really think she has influenced me, but I think there are similarities in our work. We have both used the home as a kind of kick-off point, as the space that starts the thoughts of a body of work. I eventually got to meet Louise in New York, soon after I made House. She asked to see me because she had seen a picture of House in the New York Times while she was ironing it one morning, so she said. She was wonderful and slightly kind of nutty; very interested and eccentric. She drew the whole time; it was very much a salon with me there as her audience, watching her. I remember her remarking that I was shorter than she was. I don't know if this was true but she was commenting on the physicality of making such big work and us being relatively small women. When you meet her you don't know what's true, because she makes things up. She has spun her web and drawn people in, and eaten a few people along the way."
"I had to wait 110 years to become famous... I intend to enjoy it as long as possible."
"I see badly, I hear badly, and I feel bad, but everything's fine."
"I took pleasure when I could... I acted clearly and morally and without regret. I'm very lucky."
"I wait for death... and journalists."
"I have got only one wrinkle, and I am sitting on it."
"I had a hell of a lot of will power! A hell of a will power, you understand? And it was very useful to me."
"Every age has its happiness and troubles."
"I have a rather masculine nature. I'm not afraid of anything."
"I have heard much of these languishing lovers, but I never yet saw one of them die for love."
"To me it seems much better to love a woman as a woman, than to make her one's idol, as many do. For my part, I am convinced that it is better to use than to abuse."
"No one ever perfectly loved God who did not perfectly love some of his creatures in this world."
"Un malheureux cherche l'autre."
"He who knows his own incapacity, knows something, after all."
"Man is wise ... when he recognises no greater enemy than himself."
"God always helps madmen, lovers, and drunkards."
"Mariage est un état de si longue durée, qu'il ne doit être commencé légèrement, ne sans l'opinion de nos meilleurs amis et parents."
"When one has one good day in the year, one is not wholly unfortunate."
"Blessed, unquestionably, is he who has it in his power to do evil, yet does it not."
"Though jealousy be produced by love as ashes are by fire, yet jealousy extinguishes love, as ashes smother the flame."
"I never knew a mocker who was not mocked, ... a deceiver who was not deceived, or a proud man who was not humbled."
"Ilz font semblant de n'aymer poinct les raisins quand ilz sont si haults, qu'ilz ne les peuvent cueillir."
"Some there are who are much more ashamed of confessing a sin than of committing it."
"The less one sees and knows men, the higher one esteems them; for experience teaches their real value."
"There are few husbands whom the wife can not win in the long run by patience and love, unless they are harder than the rocks which the soft water penetrates in time."
"The more hidden the venom, the more dangerous it is."
"We are always more disposed to laugh at nonsense than at genuine wit; because the nonsense is more agreeable to us, being more comformable to our own natures: fools love folly, and wise men wisdom."
"There is no greater fool than he who thinks himself wise; no one wiser than he who suspects he is a fool."
"There is in us more of the appearance of sense and of virtue than of the reality."
"The virtuous action, done for virtue's sake alone, is truly laudable."
"Men are so accustomed to lie, that one can not take too many precautions before trusting them — if they are to be trusted at all."
"Love works miracles every day: such as weakening the strong, and strengthening the weak; making fools of the wise, and wise men of fools; favoring the passions, destroying reason, and, in a word, turning everything topsy-turvy."
"He who knows his incapacity, knows something."
"The woman who does not choose to love should cut the matter short at once, by holding out no hopes to her suitor."
"Extreme concupiscence may be found under an extreme austerity."
"Hypocrites are wicked: they hide their defects with so much care, that their hearts are poisoned by them."
"We shall all be perfectly virtuous when there is no longer any flesh on our bones."
"I confess I should be glad if my pleasures were as pleasing to God as they are to me: in that case, I should often find matter for rejoicing."
"It is difficult to repent of what gives us pleasure."
"No one perfectly loves God who does not perfectly love some of his creatures."
"In love, as in war, a fortress that parleys is half taken."
"Pleasures are sins: we regret to offend God; but, then, pleasures please us."
"The true and the false speak the same language."
"A woman of honor should never suspect another of things she would not do herself."
"Since love teaches how to trick the tricksters, how much reason have we to fear it — we who are poor simple creatures!"
"Many weep for the sin, while they laugh over the pleasure."
"There are women so hard to please that it seems as if nothing less than an angel will suit them: hence it comes that they often meet with devils."
"God has put into the heart of man love and the boldness to sue, and into the heart of woman fear and the courage to refuse."
"Love is a disease that kills nobody, but one whose time has come."
"The principal themes of the [Heptaméron] are rape, seductions bordering on rape, incest and numerous infringements of the sex and marriage codes of aristocratic Europe."
"The first modern woman."
"Anyone who acts without paying attention to what he is doing is wasting his life. I'd go so far as to say life is denied by lack of attention, whether it be to cleaning windows or trying to write a masterpiece."
"You don’t have to wait till you feel the pain. You can start right now. It’s not too late to be grateful."
"We will not put an end to extreme poverty if we do not give priority to education especially, girls' education"
"I think the price is having people who don't really know where you're going, where you want to go where you're coming from, make decisions, and sometimes these decisions can be very bad for you. But it's the price that I have to pay to get my music out and to be here today. And it's normal because everybody will go through it."
"I think artistes are humans as well. Even though they possess special gifts. They're also humans that go through what you go through every day. They have aches and they fall ill. We hear them because they're famous. A lot of unknown people, regular people who all we don't know, we don't celebrate them, they are. I think this life is an illusion. This life we need light."
"We'll never forget this year. But I think every day of my life has always been a lock-down. I'm usually almost in isolation all the time. So this time it wasn't very hard for me. It was like I've lived this every day of my life. I actually enjoyed and got to see what actual silence means; where I didn't have boats on the water and we could see fishes jumping out. And the birds were out, the sky was blue. You didn't hear the sound of cars. It was surreal."
"Tomorrow is your opportunity to fail or be successful if you please"
"“When you just can’t see the future, when you just can’t see the light, you always got to put on a fight.”"
"“I know I can’t change the past, but as the river keeps flowing, I’ll keep on moving on.”"
"“Universal quality education is one of the best antidotes to poverty”"
"“Always stay humble and kind”"
"“We don’t have to go to 360 degrees, all we have to go is 180. We don’t have to climb the highest mountains, all you’re looking for is within you”"
"https://guardian.ng/opinion/asa-nigerias-singing-hawk/"
"I understand the full extent of the expression to surrender oneself, but I cannot explain it. I only know that it is very vast, that it embraces both the present and the future."
"The surrendered soul has found paradise on earth."
"A few days ago, I saw something that consoled me very much. It was during my thanksgiving, when I was making a few reflections on the goodness of God — and how would it be possible not to think of this in such moments: of this infinite goodness, uncreated goodness, source of all goodness! And without which there would be no goodness, neither in people nor in other creatures."
"I’ve been drawing since childhood but I studied economics instead of art, I was really interested in political news and geopolitics. My favourite topic is political drawing/cartoon. It is a perfect way to combine my 2 passions: my interest for the news and my drawing skills."
"I work in political/editorial cartoon but also in children’s book illustration. They are 2 different genres, but I like changing from time to time what kind of topics I’m working on. According to my mood I will spend more time in one or another genre.I like to denounce with my cartoons, but sometimes it is also good to put some poetry in this complicated world and the children illustrations help me to focus in something more positive."
"In the political-cartoons genre I like Ares and (Angel) Boligan´s work for their graphic style. I also admire the work of Quino…In children´s illustration, I could give a lot of names also but if I had to choose only one I can say I really admire the work of Rebecca Dautremer. I’m fascinated by her work."
"I can no longer think of any way to change my life except by having a baby. I will never sink lower than that."
"I am beginning to reach the age when I say hello to the old women I meet in my neighborhood, anticipating the moment in life when I shall be one of them. When I was twenty I didn't notice them; they would be dead before my face had wrinkles."
"The worst thing about shame is that we imagine we are the only ones to experience it."
"Maybe the true purpose of my life is for my body, my sensations and my thoughts to become writing, in other words, something intelligible and universal, causing my existence to merge into the lives and heads of other people."
"I love my life, I like to be cosmopolitan, I would like to visit the whole earth and love it all."
"I am endowed by shame's vast memory, more detailed and implacable than any other, a gift unique to shame."
"Impressionism has produced by this very method not only a new, but a very useful way of looking at things. It is as though all at once the window opens and the sun and air enter your house in torrents. Nature appears clear, enchanted, interesting. It is as though suffocating air had been let out of your attic!"
"No one has ever arrived at a power of analysis of tonal values at once so intense and so sweet...Monet may or may not have thought out these works, but with what vigor he has executed them...I cannot say at what point Monet arouses my emotions, but he produced in me such sensations as make me happy, but which I could not have discovered myself. He opens my eyes and makes me see better."
"The severity of Monsieur Ingres frightened me. I tell you, because he doubted the courage and perseverance of a woman in the field of painting. He wished to impose limits. He would assign to them only the painting of flowers, of fruits, of still lifes, portraits and genre scenes...I quickly understood that I could take no part in that school except to waste my time."
"I am told that I am an accomplice of the Commune. Certainly, yes, since the Commune wanted more than anything else the social revolution, and since the social revolution is the dearest of my desires. More than that, I have the honour of being one of the instigators of the Commune, which by the way had nothing–nothing, as is well known–to do with murders and arson. I who was present at all the sittings at the Town Hall, I declare that there was never any question of murder or arson...Do you want to know who are really guilty? It is the politicians. And perhaps later light will be brought on to all these events which today it is found quite natural to blame on all partisans of the social revolution…Since it seems that any heart which beats for freedom has the right only to a lump of lead, I too claim my share."
"how I loved her. How grateful I am to her for the freedom she allowed me to act as my conscience dictated, and how much I would have liked to spare her the bad days she so often had."
"He had brought a volume of Baudelaire which we read a few pages of when we had the time."
"One of the future revenges for the murder of Paris will be that of revealing the customary infamous betrayals of military reaction."
"We are Anarchists because it is absolutely impossible to obtain justice for all in any other way than by destroying institutions founded on force and privilege. We cannot believe that improvement is possible, if we still keep up the same institutions, now more rotten than in the past, or if we merely replace those whose iniquities are known by new men."
"In what would you that we should help those who govern—their work being only exploitation and wholesale murder—it has never been otherwise: the reason for the existence of a state is nothing but the accomplishment of some crime or other in order to assure the domination of a privileged class."
"The land which belongs to all can no more be divided than the light which also belongs to all."
"The ideal alone is the truth — it is the measure of our horizon. Time was when the ideal was to live without eating an other up. Is it not so still under another form which exists in the so-called civilized countries where the exploiter eats up the exploited? Do not the people in nocks fertilize the soil by their sweat and blood?"
"That is what we want to destroy — this annihilation — this eating of man by an other man."
"is it not time that our limited tongues should fall into the ocean of speech and of human thought? What will be the language of mankind delivered to the new Aurora — Anarchy!"
"Along with her more famous sisters, the radical women born in the decade of the Paris Commune, Madeleine Pelletier belonged to the first generation of women for whom higher education was available and participation in mass political parties open. They shared not only the heritage of the Russian nihilists-Chernyshevsky's fictional Vera, Breshkovskaia, Perovskaia-they also grew up with stories of the Paris Commune and Louise Michel, whose funeral Pelletier and Alexandra Kollontai attended."
"The most interesting women in modern European history appear in the ranks of radical political movements. It is difficult to find conservative or traditional counterparts equal to Louise Michel, Emma Goldman, and Rosa Luxemburg. Even Isadora Duncan, creator of modern dance, flirted with communism. More thoughtful and articulate and certainly as politically active as any of these women is the lesser known Spanish anarchist, Federica Montseny. On asking what attracted these women to radical politics, one discovers in each a commitment to feminism. No person, not even Emma Goldman, explored this necessary relationship between feminist and socialist principles more provocatively than did Federica Montseny."
"The world carnage put an end to the golden era when a Bakunin and a Herzen, a Marx and a Kropotkin, a Malatesta and a Lenin, Vera Sazulich, Louise Michel, and all the others could come and go without hindrance. In those days who cared about passports or visas? Who worried about one particular spot on earth? The whole world was one's country."
"For the anarchists in the United States Voltairine de Cleyre became the American version of Louise Michel, the French anarchist teacher who had engaged in terrorist activity during the Paris Commune, had endured several prison sentences, and was the recognized saint of international anarchism. Louise Michel had lived in deep privation, gave all her possessions to fellow revolutionaries, and spent a life of devoted self-sacrifice in the cause of anarchism. Her one self-indulgence was a passionate devotion to her mother. Anarchists emphasized the similarities between Michel and de Cleyre. Both were teachers; both nearly had been assassinated by former followers and had refused to prosecute their attackers; both tended toward extreme generosity toward the movement"
"How many are there of the countless millions who have entered this life, passed through its changing scenes and at last have laid down to rest, of whom it can be truly said, “Here rest they who have labored for the uplifting of the oppressed, who have devoted their energies unstintingly in the interest of the ‘common people?’” We fear there are few indeed. A life devoted to the interest of the working class; a life of self-abnegation, a life full of love, kindness, gentleness, tragedy, activity, sadness and kind-ness, are some of the characteristics which went to make up the varied life of our comrade, Louise Michel. In the elderly woman, clad in simple black garments, with gray hair curling upon rounded shoulders and kindest of blue eyes glancing from the strongly marked face, none but those who knew her personally would in the last few years have recognized Louise Michel…So it is in the baffling ocean of humanity. A strong character like Louise Michel looms up like a pillar of light or a star of hope, and the weary reformer sees it and takes fresh courage to struggle on in the surging ocean of humanity, and endeavors to calm its troubled waves and point the way to the harbor of plenty."
"La mujer," one of the articles that Luisa Capetillo published in 1912 in Cultura obrera, was later included in the anthology, Voces de liberación (Voices of Liberation), published in 1921 by Lux Editorial from Argentina. Printed for the purpose of gathering the libertarian voices of the most progressive women in the world, the book contains short essays by Rosa Luxembourg, Clara Zetkin, Emma Goldman, Louise Michel, and various Latin American women including Margarita Ortega, a Mexican revolutionary, María López from Buenos Aires, and Rosalina Gutiérrez from Montevideo. The editorial note introducing the authors states, "These voices of liberation are a call to women by their own compañeras to think more and act together with men in the struggle for human emancipation."
"The God of Indian devotion - bhakti who responds to the same eternal needs of the human heart as exists anywhere else, never detaches himself wholly from the immanence of the world. He is personal and endowed with feelings only in the eyes of popular piety; to thought he reveals himself both far beyond and within at the same time; he reveals it as much as he hides it; and each man is in himself in some sort a manifestation of God."
"How to create works of art when nothing connects people to the world? If the artist remains fixed from himself to himself, without any distance in which a relationship to the world and to the other can be inscribed, his work will remain sterile as in the Greek myth of Hesiod's genesis, and is in no way different from any other object."
"The beauty in a work of art is not in the prettiness of what is represented, but emanates from the work as a whole, it is its substrate and it derives from nature."
"Art is about man's belonging to the world and it is through art that man, through aesthetic emotion, experiences awareness of his existence. The artist grasps the world, and the world that appears to us in fractions he restores to us in unity."
"I'm always scared when I think that man who is a being endowed with abilities of reflection, is not capable of solving their personal or collective disputes without violence."
"[H]eavy load of his far-from-dead past, which was beginning to seem like an albatross around my neck."
"To be Christian is to walk with Christ on His way, without dodging Golgotha in the impregnable confidence that the evils that can mark our lives and those of the world are known by Christ, taken in Him in the gift He makes of His life. And that thus they are held in the power of His Resurrection, which delivers us from fear and despair."
"Heritage was the block I tried since November along with Versace. When I arrived in Ticino, I had in mind that I wanted to do this one but I didn't know if mentally I would be able to give my all in a hard high ball, because the final part of the recovery is not that easy and the fall may not be very good"
"A movement was causing me problems for 6/7 sessions, until the day we went with Mélissa (LeNeve) and Brooke (Raboutou) and we focused on “finding the method”. After that I was able to start testing. But mentally I always said to myself “if I manage to make the movement of recovery I give myself the option of not continuing, if I do not feel confident in the future.""
"When I’m free soloing, I feel O.K. I always have a big safety margin, I’m not struggling. You feel quite powerful and calm. If I ever felt afraid, I wouldn’t go. I don’t like to bet. That goes for everything. I don’t run after luck. With my publishing company, it’s exactly the same. I go step by step and build something."
"I did the American Direct (ED1 5.10+ A0, 1,100m) on the Dru when I was 17. I was just an amateur. I was climbing because I liked climbing, but I didn’t know I would be able to do what I did after. It was just pleasure. I was still a child."
"I realized I don’t like aid climbing. It was boring. But I learned a lot about myself: [It was] long, four days of bad weather, couldn’t go out of my portaledge."
"I didn’t want people to say it was the first female ascent, I wanted to be the first person to climb the Eiger onsight and solo in winter (though I don’t know for sure that I was!)."
"Concentration is the biggest thing I learned through my career. You can’t succeed if you are not focused. Climbing taught me that. You never let it go. Concentration in each instant, each minute, each second."
"On a personal note it was wonderful to be able to score my first goals at a World Cup, I think I’m going to keep on the positives. We were able to score six goals."
"There are a couple of negative notes. We conceded three goals, but for me the most important thing is to hold our heads high and we’ve got a couple of days to work on our defensive set play."
"I do not believe that the few women who have achieved greatness in creative work are the exception, but I think that life has been hard on women. It has not given them opportunity, it has not made them convincing. A woman has not been considered a working force in the world, and the work that her sex and conditions impose upon her has not been so adjusted as to give her a little fuller scope for the development of her best self. She has been handicapped and only the few through force of circumstances or inherent strength have been able to get the better of that handicap. There is no sex and art. Genius is an independent quality. The woman of the future with her broader outlook, her greater opportunities will go far, I believe, in creative work of every description."
"Marriage must adapt itself to one's career. With a man, it is all arranged and expected. If the woman is the artist, it upsets the standards, the conventions, the usual arrangements, and usually, it ruins the woman's art. I feel that it is difficult to reconcile the domestic life with the artistic. A woman should choose one or the other. She must have freedom, not restraint. She must receive aid, not selfish, jealous exactions and complaints. When a woman of talent marries a man who appreciates that side of her, such a marriage may be ideally happy for both."
"It is not a young girl who composes, this is a composer"
"Her music has a certain feminine daintiness and grace, but it is amazingly superficial and wanting in variety. But on the whole, this concert confirmed that the conviction held by many, that while women may someday vote, they will never learn to compose anything worthwhile."
"It could very easily not be bearable; even with love, one gets the sense it barely is."
"I knew she wasn't going to make a mistake, so I had to go for it and give myself the best chances for birdies"
"I feel like you put a little bit more pressure on yourself because you want to perform and not disappoint anybody"
"Thankfully steering free of unwanted cuteness or sentimentality, which have no place in this score."
"Up to now I have tried to make my life a gift for him. What is most important is that my life belongs to the Lord. He has often led me to hear him, unexpectedly, and this time he has come to me and I could not say no to what the Lord was asking me."
"A cœur vaillant rien d'impossible."
"The marking features of her personality were breadth of view and rapid intuition that appeared unerring as an instinct, directness of intention and strength of purpose which lay concealed under a timid exterior, but astonished by their force when circumstances called for prompt decision and action - and a characteristic grace of humility which seemed to be her distinguishing supernatural gift."
"It was said that the saints are loyal and that he is a saint dedicated to me About his brother."
"In marriage, woman is a serf. In public instruction, she is sacrificed. In labor, she is made inferior. Civilly, she is a minor. Politically, she has no existence. She is the equal of man only when punishment and the payment of taxes are in question. I claim the rights of woman, because it is time to make the nineteenth century ashamed of its culpable denial of justice to half the human species; Because the state of inferiority in which we are held corrupts morals, dissolves society, deteriorates and enfeebles the race; Because the progress of enlightenment, in which woman participates, has transformed her in social power, and because this new power produces evil in default of the good which it is not permitted to do; Because the time for according reforms has come, since women are protesting against the order which oppresses them; some by disdain of laws and prejudices; others by taking possession of contested positions, and by organizing themselves into societies to claim their share of human rights, as is done in America; Lastly, because it seems to me useful to reply, no longer with sentimentality, but with vigor, to those men who, terrified by the emancipating movement, call to their aid false science to prove that woman is outside the pale of right; and carry indecorum and the opposite of courage, even to insult, even to the most revolting outrages."
"When you kill these Flemish boars, do not spare the sows; them I would have spitted."
"Et quand divinement ta voix m’enchaine Je vois s’évanouir tout ma peine Et tout ton être chante et vive en moi."
"La femme est un grand enfant qu'on amuse avec des joujoux, qu'on endort avec des louanges, et qu'on séduit avec des promesses."
"Tel est le sort des femmes galantes: elles se donnent à Dieu, quand le diable n'en veut plus."
"Car, vois-tu, chaque jour je t'aime davantage, Aujourd'hui plus qu'hier et bien moins que demain."
"Aimer qui vous aime, admirer qui vous admire, en un mot, être l'idole de son idole! ... C'est trop, c'est dépasser les joies humaines, c'est déruber le feu du ciel!"
"Les esprits dont la mission est de détruire les préjugés, sont précisément ceux qui ont la plus de préjugés, et qui les professent avec le plus d'aveuglement."
"Quand on veut dessécher un marais, on ne fait pas en voter les grenouilles!"
"For ages happiness has been represented as a huge precious stone, impossible to find, which people seek for hopelessly. It is not so — happiness is a mosaic, composed of a thousand little stones, which, separately and of themselves, have little value, but which, united with art form a graceful design. Set the mosaic carefully, and you have a beautiful ornament; learn to understand intelligently the passing enjoyments which chance, which your character gives you, or which Heaven sends you, and you have an agreeable existence. Why always look to the horizon when there are such fine roses in the garden you live in?"
"There is only one proper way to wear a beautiful dress: to forget you are wearing it."
"Good taste is the modestly of the mind; that is why it cannot be either imitated or acquired."
"Hope, alas! is our waking dream."
"Infidelity, like death, admits of no degrees."
"I do not believe in virtue, but I do believe in innocence. They are very different. Innocence is ignorance."
"Our instinct inspires us, — warns us, our intelligence scents out what our reason docs not discover, for instinct is the nose of the mind."
"Love with men is not a sentiment, but an idea."
"We are only vulnerable and ridiculous through our pretensions."
"Self-interest, that leprosy of the age, attacks us from infancy, and we are startled to observe little heads calculate before knowing how to reflect."
"It has been said that society is for the happy, the rich; we should rather say the happy have no need of it."
"O, how true it is there can be no tête-à-tête where vanity reigns!"
"Treasures are not for youth; at twenty years one does not know how to be rich, or to be loved."
"It is not easy to be a widow: one must reassume all the modesty of girlhood, without being allowed to even feign its ignorance."
"A woman's life can be divided thus: the age when she dances but does not dare to waltz — it is the spring; the age when she dances and dares to waltz — it is summer; the age when she dances but prefers to waltz — it is autumn; finally, when she dances no longer — it is winter, that rigorous winter of life."
"Mother de Gramont's remarkable intelligence and influence were of great value in the important work entrusted to her, and she established the school in the Rue de Varenne so firmly in its position that the only anxiety of the foundress of the society concerning it was the success, almost too brilliant for her love of hiddenness and simplicity, which attended the work."
"Prenez-vous, quittez-vous, cherchez-vous tour à tour, Il n’est rien de réel que le rêve et l’amour."
"On aime Plus âprement que l'on ne hait!"
"Astres qui regardez les mondes où nous sommes, Pure armée au repos dans la hauteur des cieux, Campement éternel, léger, silencieux, Que pensez-vous de voir s'anéantir les hommes?"
"I would say [it has evolved] a feeling of freedom and simplicity, sometimes almost hiding elegant details that you notice later in time…I often say that it has to be omnipresent in its disappearance."
"Basically, I always try to reconcile poor and rich materials. It is an anti-ghetto and nonconformist idea about the arrangement of space and light."
"In this respect I recall with much sympathy the writer Virginia Woolf who wrote about this need for private space (A Room of One’s Own) as a condition for liberty and creativity. I had a room of my own only by the end of high school, of which I have excellent memories."
"It was not exactly as you say. In practice, the 12 of us never lived at home at the same time, because the family grew up with 22 years between the eldest to the youngest (the last one was born in 1968). My elder sisters left early, and I am the tenth. In my first memories, there were only five or six siblings at home. The worst was not to have a room of my own. The house was big, but the rooms were not many, however large."
"I may not have had any biological babies but I have many children—all those I have helped to survive and grow-up and still welcome me to their villages with glad cries of Mama Daktari. In Swahili, ‘Mama’ means ‘Madam’ or better still 'Mother', and in my heart this is what it means to me."
"OK, meet me tomorrow morning at eight. Sharp. Otherwise I leave."
"Pour faire un bon ennemi, prenez un ami: il sait où frapper."
"Les gens légers prennent légèrement les choses sérieuses et sérieusement les choses légères."
"Comment osons-nous juger les autres quand nous sentons si bien tout ce qui leur manque pour nous juger?"
"C'est un grand orgueil que d'oser être tout simplement soi."
"Il faut être très religieux pour changer de religion."
"C'est toujours une naïveté que de combattre une résolution qu'un homme a prise sérieusement. Il y a des chances pour que chacun voie plus clair que les autres dans sa propre affaire, parce qu'il y a pensé plus longtemps."
"La calomnie est comme la fausse monnaie: bien des gens qui ne voudraient pas l'avoir émise, la font circuler sans scrupule."
"Les gens les mieux élevés sont ceux qui ont le plus vite besoin de solitude, parce que ce sont ceux qui se gênent davantage pour la présence d'autrui."
"Ce sont les fortes raisons qui déterminent nos résolutions; ce sont les petites raisons qui nous arrêtent au moment de les exécuter. De loin tout le monde a envie de faire un beau voyage; et, à l'heure du départ, plus d'un est arrêté par la crainte de la cuisine ou des lits d'auberge."
"L'intelligence des femmes est inférieure à celle des hommes; toute femme qui tente de le nier travaille à le prouver."
"Les années qu'une femme retranche de son âge ne sont pas perdues: elles sont ajoutées à l'âge des autres femmes."
"La beauté attire, l'esprit amuse, le cœur retient."
"Qu'est-ce qu'une femme? Celle qui fait les heureux et qui console les malheureux."
"Stephen also, count of Blois, was despised and shamed by almost everyone, because in 1098 he had disgracefully fled from the siege of Antioch and deserted his glorious comrades who were suffering in Christ's martyrdom. He was so often reproached, by so many people, that he was forced to rejoin Christ's army, as much from embarrassment as from fear. His wife Adela also frequently urged him to go, and between caresses of her loving husband she would say: "Far be it from you, my lord, to deign to suffer the reproaches of such men for long. Recapture the famous vigour of your youth, and take up the weapons of the glorious army for the salvation of many thousands, so that there may be a great rejoicing arising from Christians all over the world, and terror for the heathen, and the public overthrow of their wicked law.""