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

Guy de Maupassant

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Guy de Maupassant
Age: 42 †
Born: 1850
Born: August 5
Died: 1893
Died: July 6
Author
Journalist
Novelist
Playwright
Poet
Short Story Writer
Writer
Henri René Albert Guy de Maupassant
Henri Rene Albert Guy de Maupassant
Guy de Valmont
Joseph Prunier
Avoid
Duty
Peace
Shipwreck
War
Captain
Government
Captains
Much
Antiwar
Every
Ship
Ships

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The simplest of women are wonderful liars who can extricate themselves from the most difficult dilemmas with a skill bordering on genius.
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One sometimes weeps over one's illusions with as much bitterness as over a death.
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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.
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Our memory is a more perfect world than the universe: it gives back life to those who no longer exist.
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History, that excitable and unreliable old lady.
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Love is always love, come whence it may. A heart that beats at your approach, an eye that weeps when you go away are things so rare, so sweet, so precious that they must never be despised.
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And taking her friend’s hand, she put it on her breast, on that firm round covering of a woman’s heart which the male often finds so satisfying that he makes no attempt to find what lies beneath it.
Guy de Maupassant
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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.
Guy de Maupassant
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You've never lived until you've almost died. For those who have fought for it, life has a flavor the protected shall never know.
Guy de Maupassant
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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!
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In the East men know panic, but they do not know what fright is.
Guy de Maupassant
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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.
Guy de Maupassant
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Ale, not beer, in a pewter mug was comme il faut, the only thing for a gentleman of letters, worthy of the name, to drink.
Guy de Maupassant
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Love always has its price, come whence it may.
Guy de Maupassant
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Travel, like dreams, is a door that opens from the real world into a world that is yet to be discovered
Guy de Maupassant
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The public is composed of numerous groups whose cry to us writers is: 'Comfort me.' 'Amuse me.' 'Touch my sympathies.' 'Make me sad.' 'Make me dream.' 'Make me laugh.' 'Make me shiver.' 'Make me weep.' 'Make me think.'
Guy de Maupassant
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I entered literary life as a meteor, and I shall leave it like a thunderbolt.
Guy de Maupassant
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How weak our mind is how quickly it is terrified and unbalanced as soon as we are confronted with a small, incomprehensible fact. Instead of dismissing the problem with: We do not understand because we cannot find the cause, we immediately imagine terrible mysteries and supernatural powers.
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A human being - what is a human being? Everything and nothing. Through the power of thought it can mirror everything it experiences. Through memory and knowledge it becomes a microcosm, carrying the world within itself. A mirror of things, a mirror of facts. Each human being becomes a little universe within the universe!
Guy de Maupassant
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To contest an author's right to create a poetic or realistic work is to want to force him to change his temperament, challenge his originality, refuse to allow him to use the eye and the intelligence nature has given him.
Guy de Maupassant