"The day after that wedding night I found that a distance of a thousand miles, abyss and discovery and irremediable metamorphosis, separated me from the day before."

Colette Literature See all quotes by Colette →

React to this quote

More by Colette

See all

“It is not a bad thing that children should occasionally, and politely, put parents in their place.”

“Nothing ages a woman like living in the country.”

“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.”

“You do not notice changes in what is always before you.”

“It’s nothing to be born ugly. Sensibly, the ugly woman comes to terms with her ugliness and exploits it as a grace of nature. To become ugly means the beginning of a calamity, self-willed most of the time.”

“As for an authentic villain, the real thing, the absolute, the artist, one rarely meets him even once in a lifetime. The ordinary bad hat is always in part a decent fellow.”

Resonant Thoughts

"My dear Duret, I went to see Monet yesterday. I found him heart-broken and completely on the rocks. He asked me to find him someone who would take from ten to twenty of his paintings at their choice, …"

— Édouard Manet

Art1832–1883

#art

"Walking has been one of the constellations in the starry sky of human culture, a constellation whose three stars are the body, the imagination, and the wide-open world, and though all three exist inde…"

— Rebecca Solnit

Social Activism1961

#nature

"Like gay-hued leaves after an autumn storm, the fallen littered the plain; the sinking sun shimmered on burnished helmets, gilt-worked mail, silver breastplates, broken swords and the heavy regal fold…"

— Robert E. Howard

Literature1906–1936

#life

"I put my pencil upon the paper, doubtfully, and drew little lines, considering my theme. But I would not long hesitate in this manner, for I knew that all creation must be chaos first, and then gestur…"

— Hilaire Belloc

Politics1870–1953

#writing