Top 100 Jules Renard Quotes
#2. Only in this world do we laugh: in hell, it won't be possible; and in heaven, it won't be proper.
Jules Renard
#4. We must be greater than God, for we have to undo His injustice.
Jules Renard
#5. To have a horror of the bourgeois is bourgeois.
Jules Renard
#8. True courage consists in being courageous precisely when when we're not.
Jules Renard
#10. Walks. The body advances, while the mind flutters around it like a bird.
Jules Renard
#11. The profession of letters is, after all, the only one in which one can make no money without being ridiculous.
Jules Renard
#12. Laziness is nothing more than the habit of resting before you get tired.
Jules Renard
#13. There is nothing like literature: I lose a cow, I write about her death, and my writing pays me enough to buy another cow.
Jules Renard
#14. I am never bored; to be bored is an insult to one's self.
Jules Renard
#15. Some people are so boring that they make you waste an entire day in five minutes.
Jules Renard
#16. I have no religion,' says Borneau, 'but I respect the religion of others. Religion is sacred.' Why this privilege, this immunity?... A believer creates God in his own image; if he is ugly, his God will be morally ugly. Why should moral ugliness be respectable?
Jules Renard
#17. If you are afraid of being lonely, don't try to be right.
Jules Renard
#18. To think is not enough, you must think of something.
Jules Renard
#19. I have a remarkable memory; I forget everything. It is wonderfully convenient. It is as though the world were constantly renewing itself for me.
Jules Renard
#20. The horse is the only animal into which one can bang nails.
Jules Renard
#21. Writing is the only profession where no one considers you ridiculous if you earn no money.
Jules Renard
#22. The danger of success is that it makes us forget the world's dreadful injustice.
Jules Renard
#23. Words are the coins making up the currency of sentences, and there are always too many small coins.
Jules Renard
#24. It is when we are faced with death that we turn most bookish.
Jules Renard
#25. The truly free man is he who can decline a dinner invitation without giving an excuse.
Jules Renard
#26. Man who waits for roast duck to fly into mouth must wait very, very long time.
Jules Renard
#27. It astounds us to come upon other egoists, as though we alone had the right to be selfish, and to be filled with eagerness to live.
Jules Renard
#28. It is not how old you are, but how you are old.
Jules Renard
#29. To succeed you must add water to your wine, until there is no more wine.
Jules Renard
#30. Failure is not the only punishment for laziness; there is also the success of others.
Jules Renard
#32. It is in the midst of the city that one writes the most inspiring pages about the country.
Jules Renard
#33. How describe the delicate thing that happens when a brilliant insect alights on a flower? Words, with their weight, fall upon the picture like birds of prey.
Jules Renard
#34. We are so happy to advise others that occasionally we even do it in their interest.
Jules Renard
#35. When I think of all the books still left for me to read, I am certain of further happiness.
Jules Renard
#36. If I were to begin my life again, I should want it as it was. I would only open my eyes a little more.
Jules Renard
#38. Words should be only the clothes, carefully custom-made to fit the thought.
Jules Renard
#39. I don't know if God exists, but it would be better for His reputation if He didn't.
Jules Renard
#40. Our dream dashes itself against the great mystery like a wasp against a window pane. Less merciful than man, God never opens the window.
Jules Renard
#41. A beautiful line of verse has twelve feet, and two wings.
Jules Renard
#42. Socialism must come down from the brain and reach the heart.
Jules Renard
#43. At the bottom of all patriotism there is war: that is why I am no patriot.
Jules Renard
#44. In the most complete friendship there is always a little empty space, like the space in an egg.
Jules Renard
#45. Dreaming is to think by moonlight by the light of an inner moon.
Jules Renard
#46. Talent is a question of quantity. Talent does not write one page; it writes three hundred.
Jules Renard
#47. If one were to build the house of happiness, the largest space would be the waiting room.
Jules Renard
#48. The void yields up nothing. You have to be a great poet to make it ring.
Jules Renard
#49. Writing is a way of talking without being interrupted.
Jules Renard
#50. An optimist is a driver who thinks that empty space at the curb won't have a hydrant beside it.
Jules Renard
#51. Talent is like money; you don't have to have some to talk about it.
Jules Renard
#52. When the defects of others are perceived with so much clarity, it is because one possesses them oneself.
Jules Renard
#53. The peasant is the only species of human being who doesn't like the country and never looks at it.
Jules Renard
#54. Truth makes many appeals, not the least of which is its power to shock.
Jules Renard
#55. Love is like an hourglass, with the heart filling up as the brain empties.
Jules Renard
#56. Oh! Old rubbish! Old letters, old clothes, old objects that one does not want to throw away. How well nature has understood that, every year, she must change her leaves, her flowers, her fruit and her vegetables, and make manure out of the mementos of her year!
Jules Renard
#57. Somewhere in the shadow cast by every famous man is a feminine victim.
Jules Renard
#58. Style means the right word. The rest matters little.
Jules Renard
#59. Life is what our character makes it. We fashion it, as a snail does its shell. A man can say: I never made a fortune because it is not in my character to be rich.
Jules Renard
#60. How many people have wanted to kill themselves, and have been content with tearing up their photograph!
Jules Renard
#62. We don't understand life any better at forty than at twenty, but we know it and admit it
Jules Renard
#63. A cold in the head causes less suffering than an idea.
Jules Renard
#64. The reward of great men is that, long after they have died, one is not quite sure that they are dead.
Jules Renard
#65. There is a justice, but we do not always see it. Discreet, smiling, it is there, at one side, a little behind injustice, which makes a big noise.
Jules Renard
#66. It is more difficult to be an honorable man for a week than to be a hero for fifteen minutes.
Jules Renard
#67. Acting of some actors seems natural, because they have no talent.
Jules Renard
#68. It is easy for a somebody to be modest, but it is difficult to be modest when one is a nobody.
Jules Renard
#69. The strong do not hesitate. They settle down, they sweat, they go on to the end. They exhaust the ink, they use up the paper.
Jules Renard
#70. Talent is a matter of quantity. Talent does not write on page, it writes three hundred.
Jules Renard
#71. In morals, always do as others do; in art, never.
Jules Renard
#72. We are in the world to laugh. In purgatory or in hell we shall no longer be able to do so. And in heaven it would not be proper.
Jules Renard
#73. Paradise does not exist, but we must nonetheless strive to be worthy of it.
Jules Renard
#74. If money does not make you happy, give it back
Jules Renard
#75. Let us stay at home: there we are decent. Let us not go out: our defects wait for us at the door, like flies.
Jules Renard
#76. In literature, there are only oxen. The biggest ones are the geniuses-the ones who toil eighteen hours a day without tiring.
Jules Renard
#77. Liberty is the right to choose. Freedom is the result of the right choice.
Jules Renard
#78. It is not enough to be happy, it is also necessary that others not be.
Jules Renard
#80. I am afraid I shall not find him, but I shall still look for him, for if he exists, he may be appreciative of my efforts.
Jules Renard
#81. You can recover from the writing malady only by falling mortally ill and dying.
Jules Renard
#82. Don't tell a woman she's pretty; tell her there's no other woman like her, and all roads will open to you
Jules Renard
#83. I finally know what distinguishes man from the other beasts: financial worries.
Jules Renard
#85. An egotist always resents meeting another egotist as if he alone had the right to be one.
Jules Renard
#86. We are ignorant of the Beyond because this ignorance is the condition of our own life. Just as ice cannot know fire except by melting and vanishing.
Jules Renard
#87. Clarity is the politeness of the man of letters.
Jules Renard
#88. The story I am writing exists, written in absolutely perfect fashion, some place, in the air. All I must do is find it, and copy it.
Jules Renard
#89. The less I understand life, the more I live it!
Jules Renard
#90. There are moments when everything goes well; don't be frightened, it won't last.
Jules Renard
#91. I can't get around this dilemma: I have a horror of troubles, but they whip me up, they make me talented. Peace and well-being, on the contrary, paralyze me. Either be a nobody, or everlastingly plagued.
Jules Renard
#92. There are no friends; only moments of friendship.
Jules Renard
#93. Writing is the best way to talk without being interrupted.
Jules Renard
#95. I find that when I do not think of myself I do not think at all.
Jules Renard
#96. Whenever I have talked to anyone at too great length, I am like a man who has drunk too much, and ashamed, doesn't know where to put himself.
Jules Renard
#97. Look for the ridiculous in everything and you will find it.
Jules Renard
#98. It doesn't pay to say too much when you are mad enough to choke. For the word that stings the deepest is the word that is never spoke, Let the other fellow wrangle till the storm has blown away, then he'll do a heap of thinking about the things you didn't say.
Jules Renard
#99. Those moments when you feel you want to read something truly beautiful. The eyes make a tour of the library, and there is nothing. Then you decide to take no matter what, and it is full of beautiful things.
Jules Renard
#100. It's not how old you are, it's how you are old.
Jules Renard
Famous Authors
Popular Topics
Scroll to Top