George Sand Quotes

Autumn is a melancholy and graceful andante, that prepares beautifully solemn adagio of winter

Where love is absent there can be no woman.

[On Chopin's Preludes:]
His genius was filled with the mysterious sounds of nature, but transformed into sublime equivalents in musical thought, and not through slavish imitation of the actual external sounds. His composition of that night was surely filled with raindrops, resounding clearly on the tiles of the Charterhouse, but it had been transformed in his imagination and in his song into tears falling upon his heart from the sky ... The gift of Chopin is [the expression of] the deepest and fullest feelings and emotions that have ever existed. He made a single instrument speak a language of infinity. He could often sum up, in ten lines that a child could play, poems of a boundless exaltation, dramas of unequalled power.

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

It is quite wrong to think of old age as a downward slope. On the contrary, one climbs higher and higher with the ad-vancing years, and that, too with sur-prising strides. Brain-work comes as easily to the old as physical exertion to the child. One is moving, it is true, towards the end of life, but that end is now a goal, and not a reef in which the vessel may be dashed.

The whole secret of the study of nature lies in learning how to use one's eyes ...

To be made evident, truth must be sought for; for of itself it is slow to appear, and between ourselves and God the obstacles are so many!

Art belongs to all times and to all countries; its special benefit is precisely to be still living when everything else seems dying; that is why Providence shields it from too personal or too general passions, and grants it a patient and persevering organization, durable sensibility, and the contemplative sense in which lies invincible faith.

Unrequited love is as different from the mutual love as the error from the truth.

Simplicity, a delicate silence about oneself, increases their worth and makes one love those whom one admires.

All your trouble comes from lack of exercise. A man of your strength and constitution ought always to have kept physically active. So don't jibe at the very wise advice that sentences you to one hour's walk a day. You imagine the work of the mind takes place only in the brain; but you're much mistaken. It takes place in the legs as well.

Life resembles a novel more often than novels resemble life.

When I tried to draw near, you dissolved into air before my lips could touch you ...

Know how to replace in your heart, by the happiness of those you love, the happiness that may be wanting to yourself

Happiness lies in the consciousness we have of it.

And I refused to make any sacrifices; for nothing on earth seemed more valuable than my peace of mind, my pleasure and my acclaim.

Let us leave political questions to be decided by the powers concerned," Sir Ralph would say, "as we have adopted a form of government which forbids us to discuss our interests ourselves. If a nation is responsible for the faults of its legislature, what one can you find that is guiltier than yours?

Learned women are ridiculed because they put to shame unlearned men.

One never knows how much a family may grow; and when a hive is too full, and it is necessary to form a new swarm, each one thinks of carrying away his own honey.

I love everything that makes up a milieu, the rolling of the carriages and the noise of the workmen in Paris, the cries of a thousand birds in the country, the movement of the ships on the waters. I love also absolute, profound silence, and, in short, I love everything that is around me, no matter where I am.

When a marriage for love is on the carpet; you must expect to waste time. But when it's a marriage of convenience between two people who have no whims and who know what they want; it's soon arranged.

We must have a passion in life.

Fretting at trouble only doubles it.

Weeds are omnipresent; errors are to be found in the heart of the most lovable.

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

The prayers of a lover are more imperious than the menaces of the whole world.

I was born to love - but none of you wanted to believe it, and that misunderstanding was crucial in forming my character. It's true that nature was strangely inconsistent in giving me a warm heart, but also a face that was like a stone mask and a tongue that was heavy and slow. She refused me what she bestowed freely on even the most loutish of my fellow men ... People judged my inner character by my outer covering, and like a sterile fruit, I withered under the rough husk I couldn't slough off.

You see what stupid folk my publishers are; but they are all alike.

Ah! that Senate is a world of ice and darkness! It votes the destruction of peoples as the simplest and wisest thing; for its members themselves are moribund.

Indeed, nothing is further from realizing the pretension of the beautiful than an ill-arranged ball. So many things difficult to assemble are necessary that during an entire century perhaps only two are given that can satisfy the artist. There must be the right climate, locale, decoration, food and costumes. It must be a Spanish or Italian night, dark and moonless, because the moon, when it reigns in the sky, throws an influence of languor and melancholy over men that is reflected in all their sensations. It must be a fresh, airy night with stars shining feebly through the clouds. There must be large gardens whose intoxicating perfume penetrates the rooms in waves. The fragrance of orange trees and of the Constantinople rose are especially apt to develop exaltation of heart and mind. There must be light food, delicate wines, fruit of all climates, and flowers of all seasons. There must be a profusion of things rare and difficult to possess, because a ball should be a realization of the most voracious imaginations and the most capricious desires. One must understand one thing before giving a ball: rich, civilized human beings find pleasure only in the hope of the impossible. So one must approach the impossible as closely as one can.

What is there over which the incomparable beauty of childhood would not triumph?

Butterflies are but flowers that blew away one sunny day when Nature was feeling at her most inventive and fertile.

Travelling is like a novel: it's what happens that counts.

The cigar is the perfect complement to an elegant lifestyle.

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

Punctuation has its own philosophy, just as style does, although not as language does. Style is a good understanding of language, punctuation is a good understanding of style.

You must write for all those who are thirsty to read and who can enjoy a good reading.

Whoever has loved knows all that life contains of sorrow and joy.

Nothing is so easy as to deceive one's self when one does not lack wit and is familiar with all the niceties of language. Language is a prostitute queen who descends and rises to all roles. Disguises herself, arrays herself in fine apparel, hides her head and effaces herself; an advocate who has an answer for everything, who has always foreseen everything, and who assumes a thousand forms in order to be right. The most honorable of men is he who thinks best and acts best, but the most powerful is he who is best able to talk and write

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

These tears do me good, they have watered the parched place; perhaps my heart will grow again there!

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.

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

I regard as a mortal sin not only the lying of the senses in matters of love, but also the illusion which the senses seek to create where love is only partial. I say, I believe, that one must love with all of one's being, or else live, come what may, a life of complete chastity.

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

We have now all sorts of good reasons for accepting life, quite as good as those that had made us reject it the previous week.

If they are ignorant, they are despised, if learned, mocked. In love they are reduced to the status of courtesans. As wives they are treated more as servants than as companions. Men do not love them: they make use of them, they exploit them, and expect, in that way, to make them subject to the law of fidelity.

Once my heart was captured, reason was shown the door, deliberately and with a sort of frantic joy. I accepted everything, I believed everything, without struggle, without suffering, without regret, without false shame. How can one blush for what one adores?

One changes from day to day, and ... after a few years have passed one has completely altered.

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

Be prudent, and if you hear, * * * some insult or some threat, * * * have the appearance of not hearing it.

Living for oneself is a bad thing. The keenest intellectual pleasure comes from being able to return to the self after being absent from it for a spell. But living all the time inside the self, that most tyrannical, demanding and capricious of companions - no, one shouldn't do it.

The publication of a book only brings very paltry results to its author.

A woman's heart has no wrinkles.

To forgive a fault in another is more sublime than to be faultless one's self.

Time is always wanting to me, and I cannot meet with a single day when I am nut hurried along, driven to by wits'-end by urgent work, business to attent do or some service to render.

One is happy once one knows the necessary ingredients of happiness: simple tastes, a certain degree of courage, self denial to a point, love of work, and above all, a clear conscience.

Between genius and madness there is often not the thickness of a hair.

We do not precisely enjoy liberty at the Figaro. M. de Latouche, our worthy director (ah! you should know the fellow), is always hanging over us, cutting, pruning, right or wrong, imposing upon us his whims, his aberrations, his fancies, and we have to write as he bids ...

A man is not a wall, whose stones are crushed upon the road; or a pipe, whose fragments are thrown away at a street corner. The fragments of an intellect are always good.

If people were not wicked I should not mind their being stupid; but, to our misfortune, they are both.

Vanity is the most despotic and iniquitous of masters, and I can never be the slave of my own vices.

Love without reverence and enthusiasm is only friendship.

One is happy as a result of one's own efforts, once one knows of the necessary ingredients of happiness-simple tastes, a certain degree of courage, self-denial to a point, love of work, and, above all, a clear conscience. Happiness is no vague dream, of that I now feel certain.

… reason told me that wherever we are thrown on earth, no matter how false our position, no matter how debased those beings who surround us, our duty is to work to combat evil and allow good to triumph.

I see upon their noble brows the seal of the Lord, for they were born kings of the earth far more truly than those who possess it only from having bought it.

A woman, when she is heroic, is not heroic by halves.

Discouragement seizes us only when we can no longer count on chance.

It seems to me that the earth belongs to God who made it and entrusted it to men as a perpetual home. But it cannot have been part of His plan that some men should be ill with overfeeding and that others should die of starvation. No matter what anyone can say they cannot prevent me from feeling sad and angry when I see a beggar crying at a rich man's door.

No religion can be built on force.

The intellect seeks, the heart finds.

I have an object, a task, let me say the word, a passion. The profession of writing is a violent and almost indestructible one.

The capacity of passion is both cruel and divine

Anything we destroy in ourselves we destroy in others. Our falls lower others and throw them down; we owe it to our fellows to keep upright, in order that they too may keep their feet.

Life in common among people who love each other is the ideal of happiness.

When mental sickness increases until it reaches the danger point, do not exhaust yourself by efforts to trace back to original causes. Better accept them as inevitable and save your strength to fight against the effects.

Life isn't always easy but so long as we have hope that we will find someone to help us through the darkness things will always get better. When we find that person, life suddenly explodes and darkness turns into a riot of colour. We're always looking for someone, what we need to remember is that someone is out there looking for us too.

Weak people live in perpetual fear and foreboding.

A day will come when everything in my life will be changed, when I shall do good to others, when some one will love me, when I shall give my whole heart to the man whi gives ne his; neanwhile, U will suffer in silence and keep my love as a reward for him who shall set me free.

When they are among us cats are angels

The mind has no sex ...

[I]t is that we are too apt to despise what appears to be neither good nor beautiful, and thus we lose what is helpful and salutary.

Immodest creature, you do not want a woman who will accept your faults, you want the one who pretends you are faultless – one who will caress the hand that strikes her and kiss the lips that lie to her."

(Letter, 17 June 1837)

Not to love is to cease to live.

O heart! love is thy bane and thy antidote.

There are no more thorough prudes than those who have some little secret to hide.

It is love, not faith, that moves mountains.

Life is a succession of afflictions for the heart.

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

Life is a slate where all our sins are written; from time to time we rub the sponge of repentance over it so we can begin sinning again.

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

No place is ugly to those who understand the virtues and sweetness of everything that God has made.

The smoke of glory is not worth the smoke of a pipe.

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

Love is too delicate a flower to rise again when one has trampled it under foot.

The progress of the language has caused us to lose many old treasures. It is thus with all progress, and one must make the best of it.

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

The beauty that addresses itself to the eyes is only the spell of the moment; the eye of the body is not always that of the soul.

Vanity is the quicksand of reason.

You, stupid one, who believe in laws which punish murder by murder ...