George Sand > Quotes

“Guard well within yourself that treasure, kindness. Know how to give without hesitation, how to lose without regret, how to acquire without meanness.”
― George Sand

“One is happy once one knows the necessary ingredients of happiness: simple tastes, a certain degree of courage, self denial to a point, love of work, and above all, a clear conscience.”
― George Sand, Correspondance, 1812-1876; Volume 5

“Let us accept truth, even when it surprises us and alters our views.”
― George Sand, Letters of George Sand

“We cannot tear out a single page of our life, but we can throw the whole book in the fire.”
― George Sand, Mauprat

“There is only one happiness in life, to love and be loved.

(Il n'y a qu'un bonheur dans la vie, c'est d'aimer et d'être aimé.)”
― George Sand

“One is happy as a result of one's own efforts once one knows the necessary ingredients of happiness: simple tastes, a certain degree of courage, self denial to a point, love of work, and above all, a clear conscience.”
― George Sand

“Nothing resembles selfishness more closely than self-respect”
― George Sand, Indiana

“Immodest creature, you do not want a woman who will accept your faults, you want the one who pretends you are faultless – one who will caress the hand that strikes her and kiss the lips that lie to her."

(Letter, 17 June 1837)”
― George Sand, The Intimate Journal

“You can bind my body, tie my hands, govern my actions: you are the strongest, and society adds to your power; but with my will, sir, you can do nothing.”
― George Sand

“Butterflies are but flowers that blew away one sunny day when Nature was feeling at her most inventive and fertile.”
― George Sand

“The old woman I shall become will be quite different from the woman I am now. Another I is beginning.”
― George Sand

“Art for art's sake is an empty phrase. Art for the sake of truth, art for the sake of the good and the beautiful, that is the faith I am searching for.”
― George Sand

“The capacity of passion is both cruel and divine”
― George Sand

“It is a mistake to regard age as a downhill grade toward dissolution. The
reverse is true. As one grows older, one climbs with surprising strides.”
― George Sand

“Life resembles a novel more often than novels resemble life.

(La vie ressemble plus souvent à un roman qu'un roman ne ressemble à la vie.)”
― George Sand

“Whoever has loved knows all that life contains of sorrow and joy.”
― George Sand

“Nothing is so easy as to deceive one’s self when one does not lack wit and is familiar with all the niceties of language. Language is a prostitute queen who descends and rises to all roles. Disguises herself, arrays herself in fine apparel, hides her head and effaces herself; an advocate who has an answer for everything, who has always foreseen everything, and who assumes a thousand forms in order to be right. The most honorable of men is he who thinks best and acts best, but the most powerful is he who is best able to talk and write”
― George Sand, Indiana

“The world will know and understand me someday. But if that day does not arrive, it does not greatly matter. I shall have opened the way for other women.”
― George Sand

“God abandons only those who abandon themselves, and whoever has the courage to shut up his sorrow within his own heart is stronger to fight against it than he who complains.”
― George Sand, La Petite Fadette

“It is warm, I am alive, I am calm and sad, I hardly know why. In this existence so even, so tranquil, and so gentle as I have here, I am in an element that weakens me morally while strengthening me physically; and I fall into melancholies of honey and roses which are none the less melancholy. It seems to me that all those I love forget me, and that it is justice, because I live a selfish life having nothing to do for any one of them.”
― George Sand

“I was born to love - but none of you wanted to believe it, and that misunderstanding was crucial in forming my character. It's true that nature was strangely inconsistent in giving me a warm heart, but also a face that was like a stone mask and a tongue that was heavy and slow. She refused me what she bestowed freely on even the most loutish of my fellow men. . . . People judged my inner character by my outer covering, and like a sterile fruit, I withered under the rough husk I couldn't slough off.”
― George Sand, Indiana

“[On Chopin's Preludes:]

"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, Story of My Life: The Autobiography of George Sand

“There are no more thorough prudes than those who have some little secret to hide.”
― George Sand

“I'm beginning to believe that there are angels disguised as men who pass themselves off as such and who inhabit the earth for a while to console and lift up with them toward heaven the poor, exhausted and saddened souls who were ready to perish here below.”
― George Sand, George Sand: A Biography

“Charity degrades those who receive it and hardens those who dispense it.”
― George Sand

“Know how to replace in your heart, by the happiness of those you love, the happiness that may be wanting to yourself”
― George Sand

“I'm not full of virtues and noble qualities. I love, but I love strongly, exclusive, stedfasty.”
― George Sand

“The most honest of men is the one who thinks and acts best, but the most powerful is the one who writes and speaks best.”
― George Sand, Indiana

“A day will come when everything in my life will be changed, when I shall do good to others, when some one will love me, when I shall give my whole heart to the man whi gives ne his; neanwhile, U will suffer in silence and keep my love as a reward for him who shall set me free.”
― George Sand, Indiana

“Admiration and familiarity are strangers.”
― George Sand