I. Frost's Selected Quotations

Everything at Amazon by and about: Colette

A fine quotation is a diamond on the finger of a witty person, but a pebble in the hands of a fool.

A happy childhood is poor preparation for human contacts.
Colette

Be happy. It's one way of being wise.

I am going away with him to an unknown country where I shall have no past and no name, and where I shall be born again with a new face and an untried heart.

I believe there are more urgent and honorable occupations than the incomparable waste of time we call suffering.

If I can't have too many truffles, I'll do without truffles.

In its early stages, insomnia is almost an oasis in which those who have to think or suffer darkly take refuge.

It's so curious: one can resist tears and 'behave' very well in the hardest hours of grief. But then someone makes you a friendly sign behind a window, or one notices that a flower that was in bud only yesterday has suddenly blossomed, or a letter slips from a drawer... and everything collapses.

January, month of empty pockets! let us endure this evil month, anxious as a theatrical producer's forehead.

Never touch a butterfly's wing with your finger.

Our perfect companions never have fewer than four feet.

Sit down and put down everything that comes into your head and then you're a writer. But an author is one who can judge his own stuff's worth, without pity, and destroy most of it.

The cat is the animal to whom the Creator gave the biggest eye, the softest fur, the most supremely delicate nostrils, a mobile ear, an unrivaled paw and a curved claw borrowed from the rose-tree.

The faults of husbands are often caused by the excess virtues of their wives.

The true traveler is he who goes on foot, and even then, he sits down a lot of the time.

The writer who loses his self-doubt, who gives way as he grows old to a sudden euphoria, to prolixity, should stop writing immediately: the time has come for him to lay aside his pen.

There are days when solitude is a heady wine that intoxicates you with freedom, others when it is a bitter tonic, and still others when it is a poison that makes you beat your head against the wall.

Total absence of humor renders life impossible.

Writing only leads to more writing.

You will do foolish things, but do them with enthusiasm.

It takes time for the absent to assume their true shape in our thoughts. After death they take on a firmer outline and then cease to change.

You do not notice changes in what is always before you.

My true friends have always given me that supreme proof of devotion, a spontaneous aversion for the man I loved.

The woman who thinks she is intelligent demands equal rights with men. A woman who is intelligent does not.

Is suffering so very serious? I have come to doubt it. It may be quite childish, a sort of undignified pastime -- I'm referring to the kind of suffering a man inflicts on a woman or a woman on a man. It's extremely painful. I agree that it's hardly bearable. But I very much fear that this sort of pain deserves no consideration at all. It's no more worthy of respect than old age or illness.

Girls usually have a paper mache face on their wedding day.

A door slamming makes one jump, but it doesn't make one afraid. What one fears is the serpent that crawls underneath it.


By an image we hold on to our lost treasures, but it is the wrenching loss that forms the image, composes, binds the bouquet.

No temptation can ever be measured by the value of its object.

One of the best things about love is just recognizing a man's step when he climbs the stairs.

We only do well the things we like doing.

Sit down and put down everything that comes into your head and then you're a writer. But an author is one who can judge his own stuff's worth, without pity, and destroy most of it.

I love my past. I love my present. I'm not ashamed of what I've had, and I'm not sad because I have it no longer.

What a wonderful life I've had! I only wish I'd realized it sooner.