A Parisian Affair and Other Stories Quotes

“What is the use of fine feelings when pitted against the power of instinct? And what chance does modest restraint have against that of natural desire?”
― Guy de Maupassant, A Parisian Affair and Other Stories

“A boat with an awning and containing four women came slowly downstream towards them. The woman at the oars was small, lean, and past her prime. She wore her hair pinned up inside an oilskin hat. Opposite her a big blonde dressed in a man's jacket was lying on her back at the bottom of the boat with a foot resting on the thwart on either side of the oarswoman. The blonde was smoking a cigarette and with each jerk of the oars her bosom and belly quivered. At the very stern of the boat under the awning two beautiful, tall, slender girls, one blonde and the other brunette, sat with their arms round each other's waists watching their two companions.

A shout went up from La Grenouillere: "Aye-aye! Lesbos!" and suddenly a wild clamor broke out. In the terrifying scramble to see, glasses were knocked over and people started climbing on the tables. Everyone began to chant "Lesbos! Lesbos! Lesbos!" The words merged into a vague howl before suddenly starting up again, rising into the air, filling the plain beyond, resounding in the dense foliage of the tall surrounding trees and echoing in the distance as if aimed at the sun itself.”
― Guy de Maupassant, A Parisian Affair and Other Stories

“The woman, one of those usually known as a good-time girl, was famous for the premature portliness which had earned her the nickname Boule de Suif. Small, round as a barrel, fat as butter and with fingers tightly jointed like strings of small sausages, her glowing skin and the enormous bosom which strained under the constraints of her dress — as well as her freshness, which was a delight to the eye — made her hugely desirable and much sought after. She had a rosy apple of a face, a peony bud about to burst into bloom. Out of it looked two magnificent dark eyes shaded by thick black lashes. Further down was a charming little mouth complete with invitingly moist lips and tiny, gleaming pearly-white teeth. She was said to possess a variety of other inestimable qualities.”
― Guy de Maupassant, A Parisian Affair and Other Stories

“First my husband, then my parents died. After that I lost my two sisters. When death comes to someone's home it's as if it wants to get as much done as quickly as possible to save coming again for a long time.”
― Guy de Maupassant, A Parisian Affair and Other Stories

“He was a fat little man with short arms, short legs, a short neck, short nose, short everything in fact.”
― Guy de Maupassant, A Parisian Affair and Other Stories

“He stared fixedly at the opposite bank where an angler was fishing, his line perfectly still. All of a sudden the man jerked out of the water a little sliver fish which wriggled at the end of his line. Twisting and turning it this way and that he tried to extract his hook, but in vain. Losing patience he started pulling and, as he did so, tore out the entire bloody gullet of the fish with parts of its intestines attached. Paul shuddered, feeling himself equally torn apart. It seemed to him that the hook was like his own love and that if he were to tear it out he too would be gutted by a piece of curved wire hooked deep into his essential self at the end of a line held by Madeleine.”
― Guy de Maupassant, A Parisian Affair and Other Stories

“On the land adjoining La Grenouillère strollers were sauntering under the gigantic trees which help to make this part of the island one of the most delightful parks imaginable. Busty women with peroxided hair and nipped-in waists could be seen, made up to the nines with blood red lips and black-kohled eyes. Tightly laced into their garish dresses they trailed in all their vulgar glory over the fresh green grass. They were accompanied by men whose fashion-plate accessories, light gloves, patent-leather boots, canes as slender as threads and absurd monocles made them look like complete idiots.”
― Guy de Maupassant, A Parisian Affair and Other Stories

“There was an undoubted affinity in his mind between the two great passions of his life: revolution and good brew. The taste of one immediately brought to mind the other.”
― Guy de Maupassant, A Parisian Affair and Other Stories

“She thought constantly about Paris and avidly read all the society pages in the papers. Their accounts of receptions, celebrations, the clothes worn, and all the accompanying delights enjoyed, whetted her appetite still further. Above all, however, she was fascinated by what these reports merely hinted at. The cleverly phrased allusions half-lifted a veil beyond which could be glimpsed devastatingly attractive horizons promising a whole new world of wicked pleasure. From where she lived, she looked on Paris as representing the height of all magnificent luxury as well as licentiousness...she conjured up the images of all the famous men who made the headlines and shone like brilliant comets in the darkness of her sombre sky. She pictured the madly exciting lives they must lead, moving from one den of vice to the next, indulging in never-ending and extraordinarily voluptuous orgies, and practising such complex and sophisticated sex as to defy the imagination. It seemed to her that hidden behind the façades of the houses lining the canyon-like boulevards of the city, some amazing erotic secret must lie.

"The uneventful life she lived had preserved her like a winter apple in an attic. Yet she was consumed from within by unspoken and obsessive desires. She wondered if she would die without ever having tasted the wicked delights which life had to offer, without ever, not even once, having plunged into the ocean of voluptuous pleasure which, to her, was Paris.”
― Guy de Maupassant, A Parisian Affair and Other Stories

“The place reeked of vice and corruption and the dregs of Parisian society in all its rottenness gathered there: cheats, conmen and cheap hacks rubbed shoulders with under-age dandies, old roués and rogues, sleazy underworld types once notorious for things best forgotten mingled with other small-time crooks and speculators, dabblers in dubious ventures, frauds, pimps, and racketeers. Cheap sex, both male and female, was on offer in this tawdry meat-market of a place where petty rivalries were exploited, and quarrels picked over nothing in an atmosphere of fake gallantry where swords or pistols at dawn settled matters of highly questionable honour in the first place.”
― Guy de Maupassant, A Parisian Affair and Other Stories