Jules Renard quotes

Literature is an occupation in which you have to keep proving your talent to people who have none
-- Jules Renard

#Success #People #Literature

As I grow to understand life less and less, I learn to love it more and more.
-- Jules Renard

#Love #Life #Marriage

On earth there is no heaven, but there are pieces of it.
-- Jules Renard

#Nature #Heaven #Pieces

The less I understand life, the more I live it!
-- Jules Renard

#Human Nature

Only in this world do we laugh: in hell, it won't be possible; and in heaven, it won't be proper.
-- Jules Renard

#Laughter #Laughing #Heaven

The ideal of calm exists in a sitting cat.
-- Jules Renard

#Cat #Animal #Humanity

I don't know if God exists, but it would be better for His reputation if He didn't.
-- Jules Renard

#God #Sarcastic #Atheist

Laziness is nothing more than the habit of resting before you get tired.
-- Jules Renard

#Running #Motivation #Business

If I had my life to live over again, I would ask that not a thing be changed, but that my eyes be opened wider.
-- Jules Renard

#Gratitude #Eye #Changed

Be modest! It is the kind of pride least likely to offend.
-- Jules Renard

#Inspirational #Life #Humility

It is when we are faced with death that we turn most bookish.
-- Jules Renard

#Turns

The only man who is really free is the one who can turn down an invitation to dinner without giving an excuse.
-- Jules Renard

#Men #Giving #Dinner

I finally know what distinguishes man from the other beasts: financial worries.
-- Jules Renard

#Funny #Money #Men

Style means the right word. The rest matters little.
-- Jules Renard

#Writing #Mean #Style

Socialism must come down from the brain and reach the heart.
-- Jules Renard

#Heart #Eugenics #Brain

An optimist is a driver who thinks that empty space at the curb won't have a hydrant beside it.
-- Jules Renard

#Thinking #Space #Empty

Words are the coins making up the currency of sentences, and there are always too many small coins.
-- Jules Renard

#Coins #Currency #Sentences

Wrinkles are engraved smiles.
-- Jules Renard

#Wrinkles #Engraved

If you are afraid of being lonely, don't try to be right.
-- Jules Renard

#Lonely #Funny Inspirational #Loneliness

I am not sincere, even when I say I am not.
-- Jules Renard

#Sincerity #Sincere

The reward of great men is that, long after they have died, one is not quite sure that they are dead
-- Jules Renard

#Men #Long #Rewards

Being bored is an insult to oneself.
-- Jules Renard

#Boredom #Bored #Insult

There are no friends; only moments of friendship.
-- Jules Renard

#No Friends #Moments

Look for the ridiculous in everything and you will find it.
-- Jules Renard

#Humor #Looks #Ridiculous

Words are the small change of thought.
-- Jules Renard

#Ideas

Writing is the best way to talk without being interrupted.
-- Jules Renard

#Writing #Way

Walks. The body advances, while the mind flutters around it like a bird.
-- Jules Renard

#Bird #Mind #Body

Failure is not our only punishment for laziness; there is also the success of others.
-- Jules Renard

#Success #Congratulations #Punishment

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

#Anger #Thinking #Mad

Love is like an hourglass, with the heart filling up as the brain empties.
-- Jules Renard

#Love #Inspirational #Dream

Writing is the only profession where no one considers you ridiculous if you earn no money.
-- Jules Renard

#Money #Writing #Literature

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

#Beautiful #Book #Eye

Style is to forget all styles.
-- Jules Renard

#Writing #Style #Forget

When I think of all the books still left for me to read, I am certain of further happiness.
-- Jules Renard

#Book #Thinking #Certain

There are moments when everything goes well, but don't be frightened.
-- Jules Renard

#Inspirational #Life #Moments

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

#Fashion #Writing #Air

Writing is a way of talking without being interrupted.
-- Jules Renard

#Writing #Talking #Way

At the bottom of all patriotism there is war: that is why I am no patriot.
-- Jules Renard

#War #Patriot #Bottom

You can recover from the writing malady only by falling mortally ill and dying.
-- Jules Renard

#Fall #Writing #Dying

I find that when I do not think of myself I do not think at all.
-- Jules Renard

#Thinking

The profession of letters is, after all, the only one in which one can make no money without being ridiculous.
-- Jules Renard

#Letters #Ridiculous #Poor

To think is not enough, you must think of something.
-- Jules Renard

#Inspiring #Success #Business

The bourgeois are other people.
-- Jules Renard

#People

Broken china lasts longer than unbroken.
-- Jules Renard

#Broken #Weakness #Lasts

Words should be only the clothes, carefully custom-made to fit the thought.
-- Jules Renard

#Clothes #Fit #Made

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

#Dream #Men #Mystery

Add two letters two paris and it's paradise.
-- Jules Renard

#Two #Paris #Add

We spend our lives talking about this mystery. Our life.
-- Jules Renard

#Talking #Mystery

Clarity is the politeness of the man of letters.
-- Jules Renard

#Men #Letters #Clarity

To have a horror of the bourgeois is bourgeois.
-- Jules Renard

#Class #Horror

We must be greater than God, for we have to undo His injustice.
-- Jules Renard

#Injustice

Talent is like money; you don't have to have some to talk about it.
-- Jules Renard

#Talent

In morals, always do as others do; in art, never.
-- Jules Renard

#Art #Morality #Moral

It is in the midst of the city that one writes the most inspiring pages about the country.
-- Jules Renard

#Country #Inspiration #Writing

Art: to nudge truth along a little.
-- Jules Renard

#Art #Littles #Nudge

It is easy for a somebody to be modest, but it is difficult to be modest when one is a nobody.
-- Jules Renard

#Modesty #Easy #Difficult

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

#Strength #Strong #Sweat

In literature, there are only oxen. The biggest ones are the geniuses-the ones who toil eighteen hours a day without tiring.
-- Jules Renard

#Writing #Oxen #Toil

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

#Flower #Fall #Bird

The void yields up nothing. You have to be a great poet to make it ring.
-- Jules Renard

#Yield #Void #Poet

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

#Memories #World #Forget

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

#Laughter #Laughing #Heaven

Do not ask me to be kind; just ask me to act as though I were.
-- Jules Renard

#Kindness #Be Kind #Kind

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

#Justice #Littles #Noise

God, he whom everyone knows, by name.
-- Jules Renard

#God #Names

Some people are so boring that they make you waste an entire day in five minutes.
-- Jules Renard

#People #Waste #Boring

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

#Fashion #Character #Men

If money does not make you happy, give it back
-- Jules Renard

#Giving #Doe #Make You Happy

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

#Inspirational #Life #Eye

Paradise does not exist, but we must nonetheless strive to be worthy of it.
-- Jules Renard

#Heaven #Doe #Paradise

In the most complete friendship there is always a little empty space, like the space in an egg.
-- Jules Renard

#Eggs #Space #Littles

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

#Privilege #Ugly #Sacred

Posterity! Why should people be less stupid tomorrow than they are today?
-- Jules Renard

#Stupid #People #Today

God does not believe in our God.
-- Jules Renard

#Believe #Doe

Truth makes many appeals, not the least of which is its power to shock.
-- Jules Renard

#Truth #Power #Shock

I am never bored; to be bored is an insult to one's self.
-- Jules Renard

#Self #Bored #Insult

We are so happy to advise others that occasionally we even do it in their interest.
-- Jules Renard

#Interest #Advise

Man who waits for roast duck to fly into mouth must wait very, very long time.
-- Jules Renard

#Men #Ducks #Long

A beautiful line of verse has twelve feet, and two wings.
-- Jules Renard

#Beautiful #Wings #Two

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

#Relationship

The danger of success is that it makes us forget the world's dreadful injustice.
-- Jules Renard

#World #Injustice #Forget

If one were to build the house of happiness, the largest space would be the waiting room.
-- Jules Renard

#Space #House #Waiting

Fame is a constant effort
-- Jules Renard

#Effort #Fame #Constant

Somewhere in the shadow cast by every famous man is a feminine victim.
-- Jules Renard

#Women #Shadow #Feminine

Liberty is the right to choose. Freedom is the result of the right choice.
-- Jules Renard

#Choices #Liberty #Results

The truly free man is he who can decline a dinner invitation without giving an excuse.
-- Jules Renard

#Men #Giving #Dinner

We don't understand life any better at forty than at twenty, but we know it and admit it
-- Jules Renard

#Birthday #Twenties #Forty

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

#Selfish #Being Selfish #Filled

To succeed you must add water to your wine, until there is no more wine.
-- Jules Renard

#Wine #Water #Add

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

#Ignorance #Fire #Ice

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

#Home #Doors #Waiting

Talent is a question of quantity. Talent does not write one page; it writes three hundred.
-- Jules Renard

#Writing #Pages #Doe

It is not enough to be happy, it is also necessary that others not be.
-- Jules Renard

#Happiness #Joy #Enough

When the defects of others are perceived with so much clarity, it is because one possesses them oneself.
-- Jules Renard

#Faults #Blame #Clarity

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

#Effort #Looks #May

A cold in the head causes less suffering than an idea.
-- Jules Renard

#Ideas #Suffering #Causes

How many people have wanted to kill themselves, and have been content with tearing up their photograph!
-- Jules Renard

#Suicidal #People #Photograph

There are places and moments in which one is so completely alone that one sees the world entire.
-- Jules Renard

#Solitude #World #Moments