Abstinence is the worst form of perversion. Guy de Maupassant More Quotes by Guy de Maupassant More Quotes From Guy de Maupassant Love always has its price, come whence it may. Guy de Maupassant love-always may love I love the night passionately. I love it as I love my country, or my mistress, with an instinctive, deep, and unshakeable love. I love it with all my senses: I love to see it, I love to breathe it in, I love to open my ears to its silence, I love my whole body to be caressed by its blackness. Skylarks sing in the sunshine, the blue sky, the warm air, in the fresh morning light. The owl flies by night, a dark shadow passing through the darkness; he hoots his sinister, quivering hoot, as though he delights in the intoxicating black immensity of space. Guy de Maupassant dark morning country To avoid each other, their eyes had developed an amazing mobility with all the cunning of enemies fearful of meeting each other head on. Guy de Maupassant mobility eye enemy To lie about a far country is easy Guy de Maupassant easy country lying You must render: never report. Guy de Maupassant reports crafts 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 wall black night The glasses were half full, which meant that the guests were completely so Guy de Maupassant glasses wine half Champagne... the wine of kings, the king of wines Guy de Maupassant champagne wine kings In fact living is dying. Guy de Maupassant dying facts Those men, those of former times, had soul and eyes that in no way resemble ours, and in their veins, along with their blood, flowed something that has disappeared: love and admiration for the Beautiful. Guy de Maupassant eye beautiful men 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. Guy de Maupassant fifty men needs Legitimized love always despises its easygoing brother. Guy de Maupassant love-always despise brother Broad daylight does not encourage the apprehension of horror. Guy de Maupassant daylight horror doe War! When I but think of this word, I feel bewildered, as though they were speaking to me of sorcery, of the Inquisition, of a distant, finished, abominable, monstrous, unnatural thing. When they speak to us of cannibals, we smile proudly, as we proclaim our superiority to these savages. Who are the real savages? Those who struggle in order to eat those whom they vanquish, or those who struggle merely to kill? Guy de Maupassant real war peace I told myself: 'I am surrounded by unknown things.' I imagined man without ears, suspecting the existence of sound as we suspect so many hidden mysteries, man noting acoustic phenomena whose nature and provenance he cannot determine. And I grew afraid of everything around me – afraid of the air, afraid of the night. From the moment we can know almost nothing, and from the moment that everything is limitless, what remains? Does emptiness actually not exist? What does exist in this apparent emptiness? Guy de Maupassant air men night The only certainty is death. Guy de Maupassant certainty We are accustomed to use our eyes only with the memory of what other people before us have thought about the object we are looking at. Guy de Maupassant eye memories people Killing is decreed by law but nature loves eternal youth. Whatever she does, however unconscious and unfeeling the act, she seems to cry out: 'Quick! Quick! Quick!' And the more she destroys, the more she is renewed. Guy de Maupassant youth law doe She was the temptress who had ensnared the first man, and who still continued her work at damnation; she was the being who is feeble, dangerous, mysteriously troubling. And even more than her body of perdition, he hated her loving soul. Guy de Maupassant body soul men Military men are the scourges of the world. Guy de Maupassant military men world