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George Sand

38 quotes

• “J'ai un but, une tâche, disons le mot, une passion. Le métier d'écrire en est une violente et presque indestructible.”

  George Sand (1804–1876) first seen 1831 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Letter to Jules Boucoiran, (4 March 1831), published in Georges Lubin (ed.) Correspondance (Paris: Garnier Freres, 1964-95) vol. 1, pp. 817-18; Frederick Niecks Frederick Chopin: As a Man and Musician (London: Novello, …

• “Ce n'est pas la première fois que je remarque combien, en France particulièrement, les mots ont plus d’empire que les idées.”

  George Sand (1804–1876) first seen 1832 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Indiana, pt. 1, ch. 2 (1832); Sylvia Raphael (trans.) Indiana (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000) p. 23

• “La vie ressemble plus souvent à un roman qu'un roman ne ressemble à la vie.”

  George Sand (1804–1876) first seen 1833 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Metella, ch. 1 (1833); Robert J. Ackerman Perfect Daughters (Deerfield Beach, Fla.: HCI, 2002) p. 31

• “Nous ne pouvons arracher une seule page de notre vie, mais nous pouvons jeter le livre au feu.”

  George Sand (1804–1876) first seen 1837 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Mauprat, ch. 11 (1837); Matilda M. Hays (trans.) Mauprat (London: E. Churton, 1847) p. 121

• “Mais, fat impudent, tu ne veux pas qu'on te pardonne, tu veux qu'on croie ou qu'on prétende n'avoir rien à te pardonner. Tu veux qu'on baise la main qui frappe et la bouche qui ment.”

  George Sand (1804–1876) first seen 1800 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Letter (17 June 1837) in The Intimate Journal of George Sand (1929) translated and edited by Marie Jenney Howe; also quoted in The Quotable Woman, 1800-1975 (1978) by Elaine Partnow

• “Thank God that one ridiculing is not enough for ambitious youth, which expands and refines itself by means of a thousand errors and mistakes, owing to the powerful engine of self-love. My friend, we often spoke of those among our contemporaries in whom we saw personality developing in frightening excess; we saw them do much evil while desiring to do good. Sometimes we made fun of them, often on several occasions; more often we pitied them. But we always loved them, nevertheless!”

  George Sand (1804–1876) said by 1876 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: To Monsieur Charles Duvernet" in Horace, translated from French to English by Zack Rogow (1995)

• “...exploiters are sometimes duped by their own egotism...the devoted don't always lack happiness. I proved nothing; one proves nothing with stories, not even true ones; but good people have consciences that bolster them, and it's for them above all that I wrote this book, in which so much malice has been perceived. They do me too much honor: I would much rather belong to the poorer class of suckers than the more illustrious one of the jokers. "Notice" (1852) in Horace, translated from French to English by Zack Rogow (1995)”

  George Sand (1804–1876) said by 1876 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “La vie est une longue blessure qui s'endort rarement et ne se guérit jamais.”

  George Sand (1804–1876) first seen 1845 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Letter to Pierre-François Bocage, (23 February 1845), published in Georges Lubin (ed.) Correspondance (Paris: Garnier Freres, 1964-95) vol. 6, p. 807; André Maurois (trans. Gerard Hopkins) Lélia: The Life of George Sand…

• “L'art est une démonstration dont la nature est la preuve.”

  George Sand (1804–1876) first seen 1848 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: François le Champi, Introduction (1848); Jane Minot Sedgwick (trans.) François the Waif {New York: H. M. Caldwell, 1894) p. 17

• “L'art pour l'art est un vain mot. L'art pour le vrai, l'art pour le beau et le bon, voilà la religion que je cherche....”

  George Sand (1804–1876) first seen 1812 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Letter to Alexandre Saint-Jean, (19 April 1872), published in Calmann Lévy (ed.) Correspondance (1812-1876). Eng. Transl by Raphaël Ledos de Beaufort in Letters of George Sand Vol. III, p. 242

• “Les chefs-d'oeuvre ne sont jamais que des tentatives heureuses.”

  George Sand (1804–1876) said by 1876 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: François le Champi, Introduction; Jane Minot Sedgwick (trans.) François the Waif (New York: H. M. Caldwell, 1894) p. 24

• “L'art n'est pas une étude de la réalité positive; c'est une recherche de la vérité idéale.”

  George Sand (1804–1876) first seen 1851 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: La Mare au Diable, ch. 1 (1851); Frank Hunter Potter (trans.) The Haunted Pool (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1895) p. 15

• “Je vois sur leurs nobles fronts le sceau du Seigneur, car ils sont nés rois de la terre bien mieux que ceux qui la possèdent pour l'avoir payée.”

  George Sand (1804–1876) first seen 1851 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Of peasants, in La Mare au diable, ch. 2 (1851); Frank Hunter Potter (trans.) The Haunted Pool (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1895) p. 25

• “Tous, quand nous avons un peu de loisir et d'argent, nous voyageons, ou plutôt nous fuyons, car il ne s'agit pas tant de voyager que de partir, entendez-vous? Quel est celui de nous qui n'a pas quelque douleur à distraire ou quelque joug à secouer?”

  George Sand (1804–1876) first seen 1855 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Un Hiver à Majorque, pt. 1, ch. 4 (1855); Robert Graves (trans.) Winter in Majorca (Chicago: Academy Press, 1978) p. 29

• “Dans les jours orageux de la jeunesse, on s'imagine que la solitude est le grand refuge contre les atteintes, le grand remède aux blessures du combat; c'est une grave erreur, et l'expérience de la vie nous apprend que, là ou l'on ne peut vivre en paix avec ses semblables, il n'est point d'admiration poétique ni de jouissances d'art capables de combler l'abîme qui se creuse au fond de l'âme.”

  George Sand (1804–1876) first seen 1855 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Un Hiver à Majorque, pt. 3, ch. 5 (1855); Robert Graves (trans.) Winter in Majorca (Chicago: Academy Press, 1978) p. 165

• “The author of these novellas has never had a system as to the priority of one sex over the other. He has always believed in the perfect natural equality between the sexes which is in no way altered by the diversity of their functions, since each sex finds its superiority in exercising the function that nature and Providence have accorded it.”

  George Sand (1804–1876) first seen 1861 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Preface to The Marquise & Pauline (1861) translated into English by Sylvie Charron and Sue Huseman (1999)

• “one should always judge youth leniently. Certainly it would be unfair to pass dogmatic judgment upon what is spontaneous and consequently naïve.”

  George Sand (1804–1876) first seen 1861 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Preface to The Marquise & Pauline (1861)

• “On est heureux par soi-même quand on sait s'y prendre, avoir des goûts simples, un certain courage, une certaine abnégation, l'amour du travail et avant tout une bonne conscience.”

  George Sand (1804–1876) first seen 1866 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Letter to Charles Poney, (16 November 1866), published in Georges Lubin (ed.) Correspondance (Paris: Garnier Freres, 1964-95) vol. 20, p. 188; André Maurois (trans. Gerard Hopkins) Lélia: The Life of George Sand (New Yo…

• “Le vrai est trop simple, il faut y arriver toujours par le compliqué.”

  George Sand (1804–1876) first seen 1867 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Letter to Armand Barbès, (12 May 1867), published in Georges Lubin (ed.) Correspondance (Paris: Garnier Freres, 1964-95) vol. 20, p. 412; Bruce Kajewski Traveling with Hermes (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press,…

• “Apprendre à voir, voilà tout le secret des études naturelles.”

  George Sand (1804–1876) first seen 1868 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Letter to Juliette Lambert-Adam (7 April 1868)

• “La beauté qui parle aux yeux, reprit-elle, n’est que le prestige d’un moment; l’œuil du corps n'est pas toujours celui de l'âme.”

  George Sand (1804–1876) first seen 1870 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Le Beau Laurence, ch. 1 (1870); Carroll Owen (trans.) Handsome Lawrence (Boston: James R. Osgood, 1871) p. 30

• “What is it that you think about, Sleeping Beauty, as you ride along the country lanes on that skinny mare of yours? And not so much of a beauty either, come to think of it. Too skinny, too pale, too dull. Not a glimmer of sparkle in those big dark eyes. Still, I do wonder, when you're riding past the hedges, little dreaming you are watched, I wonder what exactly it is you go out for. What sort of things are going through your mind? You look straight ahead, far into the distance and I wonder, do your thoughts travel that far too, or do they stay close to home, wrapped up in yourself?”

  George Sand (1804–1876) first seen 1875 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: beginning of Marianne (1875)

• “Je n'appelle pas priere un choix et un arrangement de paroles lancees vers le ciel, mais un entretien de la pensee avec l'ideal de lumiere et de perfections infinies.”

  George Sand (1804–1876) first seen 1105 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Histoire de ma vie, Part 5, Chap. 13 (trans. from Story of my life: the autobiography of George Sand, A Group Translation, p. 1105. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991)

• “He . . . saw below him an ox-cart, painfully approaching, the driver smoking in order to keep warm.”

  George Sand (1804–1876) first seen 1871 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: The Marquis de Villemer, translated by Ralph Keeler (Boston: James R. Osgood and Co., 1871), ch. 25

• “Three years ago in Saint-Front, an ugly little town that you won't find on any map, something happened that caused quite a stir. It wasn't particularly interesting and few people heard of it, but it had serious consequences. (first lines)”

  George Sand (1804–1876) said by 1876 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Laurence did what all predestined artists do: she suffered through all the misery, all the agony of unrecognized, unappreciated talent. (I)”

  George Sand (1804–1876) said by 1876 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “People who live in a calm retreat have a marvelous instinct for imagining storms and disasters in other people's lives, and they secretly rejoice at having avoided them themselves. It is a consolation that must be allowed these people, since pride, too, has its needs, and virtue alone cannot always compensate for long hours of boredom and solitude. (II)”

  George Sand (1804–1876) said by 1876 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “...her soul began to blossom and, within her soul, the drama of her life began to unfold. (III)”

  George Sand (1804–1876) said by 1876 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “[He] was a good man but no where near as good a philosopher. His mind was lofty, rather than broad; that is to say that he had more capacity for enthusiasm than for investigation. There was only room in that ardent brain for one idea, and that was the idea of revolution. (Chapter 21)”

  George Sand (1804–1876) said by 1876 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Up till now," I said to myself, "there's been something too personal about his ambition, which portrayed the future in the light of egotism. Now that he's in love, his soul will open to ideas that are more ample, truer, more generous. Devotion will reveal itself to him, and with devotion, the need and the courage to work." (chapter 13)”

  George Sand (1804–1876) said by 1876 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “The sorrows of love, the torment of remorse, even the worries of destitution hadn't seriously unsettled him; but the deep wound sustained by his vanity was more than enough to punish him. Unfortunately, it was not enough to correct him. (Chapter 32)”

  George Sand (1804–1876) said by 1876 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Here I am, worried and anxious; there she is, serenity incarnate. How can she appear before me like a human reproach? Like an ironic comment on my own life. How can she never suspect I might be miserable? Unlike myself, she is not protected by a mature, philosophical outlook on existence. Compared to me she is a child. No struggle has tested her strength, no disappointment has yet caused her spirit to waver. But that's it, by God! That's the very reason she is the stronger. She has lost nothing of herself. She has not been devoured by vultures and wolves! She is untouched. She lives life to the full. However feeble the flame within her it is enough to light her way. But as for me, the fire in my heart burns me alive.”

  George Sand (1804–1876) first seen 1875 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Marianne (1875) chapter VI

• “It was there he composed these most beautiful of short pages which he modestly entitled the Preludes. They are masterpieces. Several bring to mind visions of deceased monks and the sound of funeral chants; others are melancholy and fragrant; they came to him in times of sun and health, in the clamor of laughing children under he window, the faraway sound of guitars, birdsongs from the moist leaves, in the sight of the small pale roses coming in bloom on the snow. … Still others are of a mournful sadness, and while charming your ear, they break your heart. There is one that came to him through an evening of dismal rain — it casts the soul into a terrible dejection. Maurice and I had left him in good health one morning to go shopping in Palma for things we needed at out "encampment." The rain came in overflowing torrents. We made three leagues in six hours, only to return in the middle of a flood. We got back in absolute dark, shoeless, having been abandoned by our driver to cross unheard of perils. We hurried, knowing how our sick one would worry. Indeed he had, but now was as though congealed in a kind of quiet desperation, and, weeping, he was playing his wonderful Prelude. Seeing us come in, he got up with a cry, then said with a bewildered air and a strange tone, "Ah, I was sure that you were dead." When he recovered his spirits and saw the state we were in, he was ill, picturing the dangers we had been through, but he confessed to me that while waiting for us he had seen it all in a dream, and no longer distinguished the dream from reality, he became calm and drowsy while playing the piano, persuaded that he was dead himself. He saw himself drowned in a lake. Heavy drops of icy water fell in a regular rhythm on his breast, and when I made him listen to the sound of the drops of water indeed falling in rhythm on the roof, he denied having heard it. He was even angry that I should intepret this in terms of imitative sounds. He protested with all his might — and he was right to — against the childishness of such aural imitations. His genius was filled with the mysterious sounds of nature, but transformed into sublime equivalents in musical thought, and not through slavish imitation of the actual external sounds. His composition of that night was surely filled with raindrops, resounding clearly on the tiles of the Charterhouse, but it had been transformed in his imagination and in his song into tears falling upon his heart from the sky. … The gift of Chopin is [the expression of] the deepest and fullest feelings and emotions that have ever existed. He made a single instrument speak a language of infinity. He could often sum up, in ten lines that a child could play, poems of a boundless exaltation, dramas of unequalled power.”

  George Sand (1804–1876) said by 1876 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: On Chopin's Preludes in Histoire de Ma Vie (1902-04), Vo. IV, p. 439

• “His creation was spontaneous, miraculous. He found it without searching for it, without foreseeing it. It came to his piano suddenly, complete, sublime, or it sang in his head during a walk, and he would hasten to hear it again by, tossing it off on his instrument. But then would begin the most heartbreaking labor I have ever witnessed. It was a series of efforts, indecision, and impatience to recapture certain details of the theme he had heard: what had come to him all of a piece, he now over-analyzed in his desire to write it down, and his regret at not finding it again "neat," as he said, would throw him into a kind of despair. He would shut himself up in his room for days at a time, weeping, pacing, breaking his pens, repeating and changing a single measure a hundred times, writing it and effacing it with equal frequency, and beginning again the next day with a meticulous and desperate perseverance. He would spend six weeks on one page, only to end up writing it just as he had traced it in his first outpouring.”

  George Sand (1804–1876) first seen 1109 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: On Frédéric Chopin, in Oeuvres autobiographiques, edited by Georges Lubin, Vol. 2; Histoire de ma vie, p. 446. I [Jeffrey Kallberg] have modified somewhat the English translation printed in George Sand, Story of My Life…

• “It would be a serious mistake to assume that provincial prejudices are difficult to overcome. Whatever people say about this, one can easily win or lose their goodwill by one's presence and behavior. Some say that time is a great healer: in the provinces, it is boredom which brings about change and its justification. Any kind of change in the routine of a small town appears awful at first; but after a while people recognize that it wasn't so terrible, and that, indeed, a thousand curious but timid souls were just waiting for an example to be set, to launch themselves into a career of innovation. (III)”

  George Sand (1804–1876) said by 1876 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Those who inspire in us the greatest affection are not always those for whom we have the highest regard. Tenderness does not require admiration and enthusiasm: it is based on a feeling of equality which makes us seek out in a friend a peer, a man subject to our own passions, our own weaknesses. Veneration demands a different sort of affection than that continuously openhearted intimacy we call friendship. I would have a very poor opinion of a man who could not love what he admired; I would have an even worse opinion of a man who could love only what he admired. This applies merely to friendship. Love is a different creature entirely: it lives only on enthusiasm, and all that injures its feverish delicacy blights and withers it. But the sweetest of all human emotions, the one that is nourished by calamities and mistakes as well as by greatness and heroic acts, the one that spans every stage of life, that begins to develop in us from our very first sensation of being, and that endures as long as we do, the one that parallels and actually lengthens our life, that is reborn from its ashes and that reties itself as tightly and just as firmly after being broken; that emotion, alas! is not love, as you well know, but friendship. (beginning of Chapter 1)”

  George Sand (1804–1876) said by 1876 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Without our even realizing it, literature performs its miracles. It revives the poetry of former days; and, putting to rest in the past all that had been for intellectuals of the past the object of just criticisms, it brings to us, like a forgotten perfume, the unrecognized riches of a taste that is no longer open to discussion, since it no longer reigns arbitrarily. Art, although it poses as egotistical ("art for art's sake"), creates progressive philosophy without realizing it. It makes its peace with the mistakes and shortcomings of the past, to preserve, as in a museum, the monuments of its conquest. (chapter 18)”

  George Sand (1804–1876) said by 1876 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “the French common people, particularly in the major cities, are considered to have infinite wit. I question the epithet. Wit only exists when one is purified by a taste that the people cannot have, this taste itself being the result of certain vices of civilization which are not those of the people. So the people have no wit, from my point of view. They have more than that: they have poetry, they have genius. With them, form is nothing. They don't waste their minds hunting for it; they take it as it comes to them. But their thoughts are full of grandeur and power, because they rest on the principle of eternal justice, disregarded by societies and preserved in their hearts. When this principle sees the light of day, no matter how it is expressed, it startles and strikes like the lightning of divine truth. (chapter 11)”

  George Sand (1804–1876) said by 1876 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source