Bel-Ami Quotes

“Life is a slope. As long as you're going up you're always looking towards the top and you feel happy, but when you reach it, suddenly you can see the road going downhill and death at the end of it all. It's slow going up and quick going down.”
― Guy de Maupassant, Bel-Ami

“The only certainty is death.”
― Guy de Maupassant, Bel-Ami

“We breathe, sleep, drink, eat, work and then die! The end of life is death. What do you long for? Love? A few kisses and you will be powerless. Money? What for? To gratify your desires. Glory? What coems after it all? Death! Death alone is certain.”
― Guy de Maupassant, Bel-Ami

“In fact living is dying.”
― Guy de Maupassant, Bel-Ami

“Les paroles d'amour, qui sont toujours les mêmes, prennent le goût des lèvres dont elles sortent.”
― Guy de Maupassant, Bel-Ami

“In the kingdom of the blind the one-eyed man is king.”
― Guy de Maupassant, Bel-Ami

“Yes, this is the only good thing in life: love! To hold a woman you love in your arms! That is the ultimate in human happiness.”
― Guy de Maupassant, Bel-Ami

“It's not difficult to appear bright, don't worry. The main thing is never to show obvious ignorance of anything. You prevaricate, avoid the difficulty, steer clear of the problem and then catch other people out by using a dictionary. All men are stupid oafs and ignorant nincompoops.”
― Guy de Maupassant, Bel-Ami

“It was one of those bitter mornings when the whole of nature is shiny, brittle, and hard, like crystal. The trees, decked out in frost, seem to have sweated ice; the earth resounds beneath one's feet; the tiniest sounds carry a long way in the dry air; the blue sky is bright as a mirror, and the sun moves through space in icy brilliance, casting on the frozen world rays which bestow no warmth upon anything.”
― Guy de Maupassant, Bel-Ami

“Envy, bitter envy, was permeating his soul drop by drop, like a poison that tainted all his pleasures and made his life hateful.”
― Guy de Maupassant, Bel-Ami

“Madeleine in her turn stared at him steadily, straight into his eyes, in a profound, strange way, as if seeking to read something there, as if seeking to discover there that hidden part of a human being which can never be fathomed but may perhaps be glimpsed for a fleeting instant, in those moments of unguardedness or surrender or inattention, that are like doors left ajar onto the mysterious depths of the spirit... they stood for a few seconds, each gazing into the other's eyes, each striving to reach the impenetrable secret of the other's heart, to probe each other's thoughts to the quick. They tried, in a mute and passionate questioning, to see the other's conscience in its essential truth: the intimate struggles of two beings who, living side by side, never really know one another, who suspect and sniff around and spy on one another, but cannot plumb the miry depths of one another's soul.”
― Guy de Maupassant, Bel-Ami

“Get married, my friend, you don't know what it means to live alone, at my age. Nowadays feeling alone fills me with appalling anguish; being alone at home, by the fire, in the evening. It seems to me then that I'm alone on the earth, dreadfully alone, but surrounded by indeterminate dangers, by unknown, terrible things; and the wall, which divides me from my neighbour, whom I do not know, separates me from him by as great a distance as that which separates me from the stars I see through my window. A kind of fever comes over me, a fever of pain and fear, and the silence of the walls terrifies me. It is so profound, so sad, the silence of the room in which you live alone. It isn't just a silence of the body, but a silence of the soul, and, when a piece of furniture creaks, a shiver runs through your whole body, for in that dismal place you expect to hear no sound.”
― Guy de Maupassant, Bel-Ami

“For a number of years he had lived, eaten, laughed, loved, hoped, like everyone else. And for him it was over, over for good. A life! A few days, and then nothing! You're born, you grow up, you're happy, you wait, then you die. Goodbye! Man or woman, you'll never return to this earth! And yet each of us bears within him the fierce, unrealizable longing for eternity, each of us is a kind of universe within the universe, and each of us soon vanishes completely into the dunghill of new organisms. Plants, animals, men, stars, worlds, everything quickens, then dies, in order to transform itself. And nothing ever returns, whether insect, man, or planet!”
― Guy de Maupassant, Bel-Ami

“I hope you realize that you really hit it off with the ladies? You must cultivate that. It could take you far.”
― Guy de Maupassant, Bel-Ami

“It is not difficult to pass for being learned. The secret is not to betray your ignorance.”
― Guy de Maupassant, Bel Ami

“For the first time, Duroy thought of all that was hidden in her past and began to speculate. Obviously she'd already had lovers, but what sort were they and what kind of society did they come from? A vague jealousy, a sort of hostility against her, stirred in him, an hostility directed against everything that he did not know about her, all that part of her feelings and life which did not belong to him. He looked at her, irritated by the secrets hidden in that pretty, silent little head, which perhaps at that very moment was thinking with regret of another man, of other men. How he would have liked to peer into her memories, explore them and learn all there was to know about them!”
― Guy de Maupassant, Bel-Ami

“Everything I see reminds me that in a few days I shall no longer see it... It's horrible... I shall see nothing more... nothing of what exists... the smallest objects that we use... glasses... plates... beds where people sleep so comfortably... carriages. It's so lovely, going out in a carriage, in the evening... How much I enjoyed all that!”
― Guy de Maupassant, Bel-Ami

“It was one of those feminine faces whose every line has its own particular charm, and seems to possess a meaning, whose every movement seems to reveal or to conceal something.”
― Guy de Maupassant, Bel-Ami

“He had a fund of small talk, a pleasant voice, a caressing glance and his moustache was irresistible. Crisp and curly, it curved charmingly over his lip, fair with auburn tints, slightly paler where it bristled at the ends.”
― Guy de Maupassant, Bel-Ami

“They had moved closer to one another to watch the dying moments of the day, this beautiful bright May day.”
― Guy de Maupassant, Bel-Ami

“Dits par l'autre tout à l'heure ils l'irritaient et l'écoeuraient. Car les paroles d'amour, qui sont toujours les mêmes, prennent les goût des lèvres dont elles sortent.”
― Guy de Maupassant, Bel-Ami

“For a number of years he had lived, eaten, laughed, loved, hoped, like everyone else. And for him it was over, over for good. A life! A few days, and the nothing! You're born, you grow up, you're happy, you wait, then you die. Goodbye! Man or woman, you'll never return to this earth! And yet each of us bears within him the fierce, unrealizable longing for eternity, each of us is a kind of universe within the universe, and each of us soon vanishes completely into the dunghill of new organisms. Plants, animals, men, stars, worlds, everything quickens, then dies, in order to transform itself. And nothing ever returns, whether insect, man, or planet!”
― Guy de Maupassant, Bel-Ami

“He was one of those many-faced politicians without any strong beliefs, with no great resources, no backbone and no real knowledge of anything, a country lawyer with provincial good looks, craftily walking the tight-rope between any extremist parties, a kind of republican Jesuit, a sort of dubious little mushroom such as flourish in their hundreds on the popular dunghill of universal suffrage.”
― Guy de Maupassant, Bel-Ami

“I drink to the victory of the mind over the millions.”
― Guy de Maupassant, Bel-Ami

“<...> out of love of symmetry, just as people put two vases above a fireplace.”
― Guy de Maupassant, Bel-Ami

“Pourquoi souffrons-nous ainsi ? demande le vieux poète Norbert de Varenne à Georges Duroy. C’est que nous étions nés sans doute pour vivre d’avantage selon la matière et moins selon l’esprit ; mais, à force de penser, une disproportion s’est faite entre l’état de notre intelligence agrandie et les conditions immuables de notre vie.”
― Guy de Maupassant, Bel-Ami

“La vie est une côte. Tant qu'on monte, on regarde le sommet, et on se sent heureux; mais, lorsqu'on arrive en haut, on aperçoit tout d'un coup la descente, et la fin, qui est la mort. Ça va lentement quand on monte, mais ça va vite quand on descend. A votre âge, on est joyeux. On espère tant de choses, qui n'arrivent jamais d'ailleurs. Au mien, on n'attend plus rien... que la mort.”
― Guy de Maupassant, Bel-Ami

“Un barbat indragostit e sters de pe lista celor vii. Devine idiot, nu numai idiot, dar primejdios. Intrerup, cu barbatii indragostiti de mine sau care, cel putin, pretind ca sunt, orice relatie apropiata, mai intai pentru ca ma plictisesc, apoi, pentru ca devin suspecti, ca un caine turbat care poate avea o criza. Ii trec, asadar, in carantina morala, pana cand se vindeca. Sa nu uiti asta. Stiu foarte bine ca, la tine, dragostea e doar un soi de pofta, in timp ce la mine ar fi, dimpotriva, un soi de comuniune a sufletelor, care nu face parte din religia barbatilor. Tu ai intelege litera, iar eu spiritul...”
― Guy de Maupassant, Bel-Ami

“Essayez donc de vous dégager de tout ce qui vous enferme, faites cet effort surhumain de sortir vivant de votre corps, de vos intérêts, de vos pensées et de l’humanité tout entière, pour regarder ailleurs, et vous comprendrez combien ont peu d’importance les querelles des romantiques et des naturalistes, et la discussion du budget. »”
― Guy de Maupassant, Bel-Ami

“Движеше се
енергично между тълпата, помагайки си с раменете, блъскайки срещаните, като си
разчистваше по такъв начин път. Небрежно наместил износената си висока шапка и,
тропайки с токове по улицата, вървеше с вид на човек, който презира всичко — минувачите,
къщите, целия град. По този начин той демонстрираше високомерието на истински военен,
попаднал между цивилни.”
― Guy de Maupassant, Bel-Ami