Broad daylight does not encourage the apprehension of horror.

Elle se sentait noyée dans le mépris de ces gredins honnêtes qui l’avaient sacrifiée d’abord, rejetée ensuite, comme une chose malpropre et inutile.

Get black on white.

It is love that is sacred,” she said.” Listen, child, to an old woman who has seen three generations, and who has had a long experience of men and women. Marriage and love have nothing...

Since governments take the right of death over their people, it is not astonishing if the people should sometimes take the right of death over governments.”[On Water]

Why is it a shame for me to cause them to die and try to exterminate them, tell me? You did not talk that way when you used to come to my house in Jeanne-d’Arc...

I said, ‘If other beings besides us exist on Earth, why didn’t we meet them a long time ago?

They were so absorbed in their plotting that they did not hear Boule de Suif return. But the Comte’s whispered ‘shh!’ made them all look up. There she was. A sudden silence fell, and at...

Patriotism is a kind of religion; it is the egg from which wars are hatched.”[My Uncle Sosthenes]

Words dazzle and deceive because they are mimed by the face. But black words on a white page are the soul laid bare.

Any government has as much of a duty to avoid war as a ship’s captain has to avoid a shipwreck.”[On Water]

On aime sa mère presque sans le savoir, et on ne prend conscience de toute la profondeur des racines de cet amour qu au moment de la séparation dernière.

You have the army of mediocrities followed by the multitude of fools. As the mediocrities and the fools always form the immense majority, it is impossible for them to elect an intelligent government.

I entered literary life as a meteor, and I shall leave it like a thunderbolt.”[As quoted in Pol Neveux’s introduction, Guy De Maupassant: A Study]