Quotes from Jules Renard

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

The bourgeois are other people.

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

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.

Our dream dashes itself against the great mystery like a wasp against a window pane. Less merciful than man, God never opens the window.

Clarity is the politeness of the man of letters.

Whenever I have talked to anyone at too great length, I am like a man who has drunk too much, and ashamed, doesn't know where to put himself.

The peasant is the only species of human being who doesn't like the country and never looks at it.

Look for the ridiculous in everything and you find it.

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

God does not believe in our God.

God, he whom everyone knows, by name.

When I think of all the books still left for me to read, I am certain of further happiness.

The ideal of calm exists in a sitting cat.

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

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.

True courage consists in being courageous precisely when when we're not.

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

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

It's not how old you are, it's how you are old.

Wrinkles are engraved smiles.

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

We don't understand life any better at forty than at twenty, but we know it and admit it

Fame is a constant effort.