Frases de Guy De Maupassant

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“De fato, estar vivendo é estar morrendo.”

“Eu entrei na vida literária como um meteoro, e devo sair como um relâmpago.”

“Os dias que se seguiram foram de muita tristeza, dias tépidos de um lar que parece vazio pela falta do ser familiar que sumiu para sempre, dias de sofrimento ao encontrarmos cada objeto que lembra a pessoa falecida. A todo o momento uma saudade revive em nosso coração para torturá-lo. Aqui uma cadeira, o guarda-chuva deixado na sala de espera, seu copo que a criada deixou de retirar! E em todos os cômodos encontram-se coisas esparsas: suas tesouras, uma luva, um livro cujas folhas foram viradas por seus dedos, um grande número de pequenas coisas que assumem um significado doloroso, porque lembram mil pequenos acontecimentos.”

“Se a guerra é uma coisa horrível, não seria o patriotismo a ideia-mãe que a nutre?”

“Um beijo legítimo nunca vale tanto como um beijo furtado.”

“Dois homens nunca se penetram até a alma, até o fundo dos pensamentos; caminham um ao lado do outro, às vezes abraçados, mas nunca unidos, e a pessoa moral de cada um de nós fica eternamente sozinha por toda a vida.”

“O beijo fulmina-nos como o relâmpago, o amor passa como um temporal, depois a vida, novamente, acalma-se como o céu, e tudo volta a ser como dantes. Quem se lembra de uma nuvem?”

“O La Vie Française ganhara uma importância considerável por suas ligações conhecidas com o poder. Ele dava, antes das folhas mais sérias, as novidades políticas, indicava por meias palavras as intenções dos ministros, dos seus amigos; e todos os jornais de Paris e da província procuravam nele suas informações. Era citado, temido, começava a ser respeitado. Não era mais um órgão suspeito dum grupo de integrantes políticos, mas o órgão confessado do gabinete.”

“Choram-se às vezes as ilusões com tanta mágoa, como se choram os mortos.”

“O rabo das mulheres é tão monótono como o espírito dos homens.”

“Os grandes artistas são aqueles que impõem à humanidade a sua ilusão particular.”

“O patriotismo é o ovo das guerras.”

“Às vezes choramos as ilusões com a mesma dor com que choramos os mortos.”

“O jantar foi banal e alegre, um desses jantares onde se fala de tudo sem se dizer nada.”

“Todas as esquisitices das pessoas que vivem na solidão pareciam tomar conta do seu espírito. A menor coisa fora do lugar a irritava.”

“Todo mundo então era pérfido, mentiroso e falso? E lágrimas lhe vieram aos olhos, pois choramos sempre a morte das nossas ilusões com a mesma mágoa com que choramos os nossos mortos.”

“Não importa o que tenhamos a dizer, existe apenas uma palavra para exprimi-lo, um único verbo para animá-lo e um único adjetivo para qualificá-lo.”

“Uma obra de arte só é superior se for, ao mesmo tempo, um símbolo e a expressão exata de uma realidade.”

“Somente os imbecis podem não ser gulosos. Ser guloso é como ser artista, como ser instruído, como ser poeta. O paladar, meu caro, é um órgão perfectível e respeitável como o olho e a orelha. Não ter paladar é estar privado de uma faculdade deliciosa, a faculdade de discernir a qualidade dos alimentos, como se pode estar privado daquela de discernir as qualidades de um livro ou de uma obra de arte; é estar privado de um sentido essencial, de uma parte da superioridade humana; é pertencer a uma das inumeráveis espécies de enfermos, de desgraçados e de patetas que compõem a nossa raça; é ser um bobo de boca, enfim, assim como se é um bobo de espírito.”

“A conversa é o jogo de raquete das palavras e das ideias.”

“Quantas vezes passamos ao lado de uma felicidade possível, sem darmos por ela, visto que não há quem possa penetrar no mistério dos pensamentos, nos abandonos secretos da vontade, nos apelos mudos da carne, em todo o desconhecido de uma alma de mulher cuja boca permanece silenciosa e o olhar impenetrável e claro?”

“Night was a very different matter. It was dense, thicker than the very walls, and it was empty, so black, so immense that within it you could brush against appalling things and feel roaming and prowling around a strange, mysterious horror.”

“There is only one good thing in life, and that is love. And how you misunderstand it! how you spoil it! You treat it as something solemn like a sacrament, or something to be bought, like a dress.”

“You have the army of mediocrities followed by the multitude of fools. As the mediocrities and the fools always form the immense majority, it is impossible for them to elect an intelligent government.”

“Broad daylight does not encourage the apprehension of horror.”

“Great minds that are healthy are never considered geniuses, while this sublime qualification is lavished on brains that are often inferior but are slightly touched by madness.”

“In the kingdom of the blind the one-eyed man is king.”

“We love our mother unknowingly, and only realize how deep-rooted that love is at the ultimate separation.”

“We live always under the weight of the old and odious customs … of our barbarous ancestors.”

“Any government has as much of a duty to avoid war as a ship's captain has to avoid a shipwreck.”

“Legitimized love always despises its easygoing brother.”

“With women there is neither caste nor rank, for beauty, grace and charm take the place of family and birth. Natural ingenuity, instinct for what is elegant, a supple mind are their sole hierarchy, and often make of women of the people the equals of the very greatest ladies.
Mathilde suffered ceaselessly, feeling herself born to enjoy all delicacies and all luxuries.”

“A man forced to spend his life without ever having the right, without ever finding the time, to shut himself up all alone, no matter where, to think, to reflect, to work, to dream? Ah! my dear boy, a key, the key of a door which one can lock — this is happiness, mark you, the only happiness!”

“Since governments take the right of death over their people, it is not astonishing if the people should sometimes take the right of death over governments.”

“They held up to admiration all those women who from time to time have arrested the victorious progress of conquerors, made of their bodies a field of battle, a means of ruling, a weapon; who have vanquished by their heroic caresses hideous or detested beings, and sacrificed their chastity to vengeance and devotion.
All was said with due restraint and regard for propriety, the effect heightened now and then by an outburst of forced enthusiasm calculated to excite emulation.
A listener would have thought at last that the one role of woman on earth was a perpetual sacrifice of her person, a continual abandonment of herself to the caprices of a hostile soldiery.
The two nuns seemed to hear nothing, and to be lost in thought. Boule de Suif also was silent.”

“What would have happened if she had not lost that necklace? Who knows? who knows? How strange and changeful is life! How small a thing is needed to make or ruin us!”

“Military men are the scourges of the world.”

“I have come to the conclusion that the bed comprehends our whole life; for we were bom in it, we live in it, and we shall die in it.”

“Let them respect my convictions, and I will respect theirs!”

“That was perhaps the only woman I have ever loved — no — that I ever should have loved. Ah, well! who can tell? Circumstances rule one. And then — and then — all passes.”

“There are in France some fifty thousand young men of good birth and fairly well off who are encouraged to live a life of complete idleness. They must either cease to exist or must come to see that there can be no happiness, no health even, without regular daily labor of some sort … The need of work is in me.”

“The count uttered several rather risky witticisms, but so tactfully were they said that his audience could not help smiling. Loiseau in turn made some considerably broader jokes, but no one took offence; and the thought expressed with such brutal directness by his wife was uppermost in the minds of all: "Since it's the girl's trade, why should she refuse this man more than another?"”

“No one looked at her, no one thought of her. She felt herself swallowed up in the scorn of these virtuous creatures, who had first sacrificed, then rejected her as a thing useless and unclean.”

“In the cold light of the morning they almost bore a grudge against the girl for not having secretly sought out the Prussian, that the rest of the party might receive a joyful surprise when they awoke. What more simple?
Besides, who would have been the wiser? She might have saved appearances by telling the officer that she had taken pity on their distress. Such a step would be of so little consequence to her.
But no one as yet confessed to such thoughts.”

“At first no one spoke. Boule de Suif dared not even raise her eyes. She felt at once indignant with her neighbors, and humiliated at having yielded to the Prussian into whose arms they had so hypocritically cast her.”

“I was hard hit. I wanted to ask this little girl to marry me. If we had passed eight days together, I should have done so! How weak and incomprehensible a man sometimes is!”

“Let us protest and let us be angry, let us be indignant, or let us be enthusiastic, Schopenhauer has marked humanity with the seal of his disdain and of his disenchantment.
A disabused pleasure-seeker, he overthrew beliefs, hopes, poetic ideals and chimeras, destroyed the aspirations, ravaged the confidence of souls, killed love, dragged down the chivalrous worship of women, crushed the illusions of hearts, and accomplished the most gigantic task ever attempted by scepticism. He spared nothing with his mocking spirit, and exhausted everything. And even to-day those who execrate him seem to carry in their own souls particles of his thought.”

“I took the book from him reverently, and I gazed at these forms incomprehensible to me, but which revealed the immortal thoughts of the greatest shatterer of dreams who had ever dwelt on earth.”

“I did not love her, I did not even know her. And for all that, I was touched and conquered. I wanted to save her, to sacrifice myself for her, to commit a thousand follies! Strange thing! How does it happen that the presence of a woman overwhelms us so? Is it the power of her grace which enfolds us? Is it the seduction of her beauty and youth, which intoxicates one like wine?
Is it not rather the touch of Love, of Love the Mysterious, who seeks constantly to unite two beings, who tries his strength the instant he has put a man and a woman face to face?”