Jules Renard

Pierre-Jules Renard (C.E.1864 – 1910), French aphorist and writer.

Jules Renard

Quotes by Jules Renard:

You have to tell the truth, at least sometimes, just to be believed the day we lie.

Dis quelquefois la vérité, afin qu'on te croie quand tu mentiras.

• The crit is a soldier who fires on his troops. Quoted in [[
• Never be satisfied: art is all here.
• "I don't get involved in politics" is like saying "I don't deal with life". , ilsole24ore.com.
• When I think of all the books I have left to read, I am sure that I am still happy.
• If you want to win the sympathy of women tell them the things you wouldn't want men to say to your wife.

Diary C.E.1887-1910:

• Baudelaire: his heavy phrase, loaded with electric fluids. (C.E.1887; Vergani, p. 11)

There is in me an almost incessant need to speak ill of others, and a great indifference to hurt others. (October 23, C.E.1887; Vergani, p. 12)

• If even the slightest truth could come out of a discussion, there would be less discussion. Nothing is more depressing than understanding each other: once you have understood each other, there is nothing more to say to each other. (October 24, C.E.1887; Vergani, p. 12)
• The most beautiful pages about the campaign are written in the middle of the city. (November 25, C.E.1887; Vergani, p. 13)
• Work thinks, laziness dreams. It has its own very bad way of being good. (December 27, C.E.1887; Vergani, p. 13)

The life of the intellect is to reality what geometry is to architecture. (November 11, C.E.1888; Vergani, p. 14) proportion

• How many people wanted to kill themselves and instead limited themselves to tearing up their photographs! (December 29, C.E.1888; Vergani, p. 15)
• Depicts the ideal of calm with the image of a cat sitting. (January 30, C.E.1889; Vergani, p. 16)

I believe that the eyes of newborns, these eyes that do not yet see and in which one can scarcely see, these eyes without white, deep and uncertain, are made of a particle of the abyss from which they have ascended. (February 2, C.E.1889; Vergani, p. 16)

• The most stupid exaggeration is that of tears. It's as annoying as a faucet that won't close. (March 29, C.E.1889; p. 17)
• Horror of the bourgeois is a bourgeois attitude. (April 10, 1889; Vergani, p. 18)
• Do we have a destiny? How boring not to know! How boring it would be if you knew! (January 14, C.E.1889; Vergani, p. 19)
• The sleep is the square of memories. Help their return. (August 30, C.E.1889; Vergani, p. 21)
• I love men more or less, depending on the amount of annotations I can get out of them. (November 25, C.E.1889; Vergani, p. 32)
• You can be poet and have short hair. You can be a poet and pay your rent regularly. You can be a poet and make love to your wife. (January 2, C.E.1890; p. 33)
• It is necessary to operate through dissociation and not through the association of ideas. An association is almost always trivial. Dissociation, by breaking down, discovers hidden affinities. (January 24, C.E.1890; Vergani, p. 33)
• The bourgeois, are the others. (January 28, C.E.1890; Vergani, p. 33)
• You enter a book like a train, with a few glances behind you, with some hesitation and with the boredom of changing places and ideas. How will the trip go? What will the book be like? (February 15, C.E.1890; Vergani, p. 33)
• Look for the ridiculous in everything, you will find it. (February 17, C.E.1890)
• The beggar gaze of the actor who in all circumstances, even in the most serious, turns around to make sure that he is looked at and that he has been recognized. (February 20, C.E.1890; Vergani, p. 34)
• praise is placed as money is placed: to be returned to us with interest. (March 18, C.E.1890; Vergani, p. 36)
• What does it matter what I do? Ask me what I think. (April 12, C.E.1890; Vergani, p. 36)
• The two Dumas' turned the theory of economics upside down. The father was the prodigal, and the son was the miser. (April 17, C.E.1890; Vergani, p. 36)

When you have committed an indiscretion, you think you can get away with recommending that you are more discreet than you have been yourself. (April 21, 1890; Vergani, p. 36)

• You are twenty years old from fifteen to thirty years old. (June 28, C.E.1890)

On a vingt ans depuis quinze jusqu'à trente ans.

• Mérimée is perhaps the writer who will last the longest, because he makes less use of images than all the others, this source of the old age of style. Posterity will belong to the dry writers, to the constipated writers. (August 12, C.E.1890; Vergani, p. 37)
• Cracked plates last longer than intact plates. (September 4, C.E.1890; Vergani, p. 37)
• No matter how whole our lives are, we can always be classified into some category of thieves. (January 10, C.E.1891; Vergani, p. 40)
• George Sand, the Breton cow of literature. (February 23, C.E.1891; Vergani, p. 41)
• I don't read anything for fear of finding something good. (March 7, C.E.1891; p. 43)
• When I am shown a drawing, I look at it just long enough to prepare what I have to say about it. (March 9, C.E.1890; p. 44)
• Balzac is perhaps the only writer who has the right to write badly. (March 23; Vergani, p. 45)
• Style is the oblivion of all styles. (April 7, C.E.1891; Vergani, p. 46)

Renard in C.E.1900

• You have to take the idea that comes to you by the neck and immediately crush it on the paper. (May 7, C.E.1891; Vergani, p. 46)
• My fear was that one day I would be nothing more than a harmless Flaubert from the drawing room. (May 7, C.E.1891; Vergani, p. 46)

War is perhaps nothing but the revenge of the beasts we have killed. (July 30, C.E.1891; Vergani, p. 48)

• Sir, I have seen on the butcher's bench several brains similar to yours. (October 16, C.E.1891; Vergani, p. 48)
• I have calculated that the literature may be enough to feed a sparrow. (November 25, C.E.1891; Vergani, p. 50)
• It is necessary for man free to take the liberty of being slave from time to time. (January 27, C.E.1892; Vergani, p. 53)
• What will save us? The faith? I don't want to have faith, and I don't want to be saved. (January 30, C.E.1892; Vergani, p. 54)
• We are all poor imbeciles (I speak for myself, of course) incapable of being good or bad for two full hours straight. (January 30; Vergani, p. 54)
• Analyze a book! What would you say about a guest who, while eating a ripe peach, took the pieces out of his mouth to take a good look at them? (March 15, C.E.1892; Vergani, p. 56)
• I would like to feed the words in the palm of my hand. (March 26, C.E.1892; Vergani, p. 56)
• The new formula of the novel is not to make the novel. (April 6, C.E.1892; Vergani, p. 56)
• Oscar Wilde has breakfast next to me. He has the originality of being English, he gives you a cigarette, but he chooses it himself. It doesn't go around the board, but it moves an entire board. His face is covered with small red marks. He is huge and carries a huge cane stick. (April 7, C.E.1892; Vergani, p. 56)
• There are writers who don't recognize themselves, as if they don't have their noses in the middle of their faces. (April 23, C.E.1892; Vergani, p. 57)
• Irony is the modesty of humanity. (April 30, C.E.1892; Vergani, p. 57)
• The fear of boredom is the only excuse for work. (September 10, C.E.1892; Vergani, p. 60)
• When you're in a crowd, you feel like everyone is looking through your ears. (October 4, 1892; Vergani, p. 60)
• death of others helps us to live. (October 5, C.E.1892; Vergani, p. 60)
• Verlaine, a dunghill Socrates. (October 10, C.E.1892; Vergani, p. 60)
• The rare, brief joy of hearing that there is a little bit of perfection every year. (October 28, C.E.1892; Vergani, p. 61)
• When he praises someone, he feels like he's denigrating himself a bit. (January 11, C.E.1893; Vergani, p. 63)

To give himself strength, he began to seek out the flaws, diseases, doubts, and worries of the rich. (January 22, 1893; Vergani, p. 63)

• Childhood memories drawn with an unlit match. (January 22, C.E.1893; Vergani, p. 63)

[Tristan Bernard]] tells me that I look a lot like Dickens. Here's another one that you'll need to read because it looks like it. Let's hope it's not as boring as the others. (February 20, C.E.1893; Vergani, p. 64)

• Let us work harder: let us work hard to live less and to die sooner. (March 16, C.E.1893; Vergani, p. 64)
• It is necessary to love nature and men in spite of their mud. (March 27, C.E.1893; Vergani, p. 65)
• I know: all great men, in the beginning, were misunderstood; But I'm not a great man and I'd like to be understood right away. (April 28, C.E.1893; Vergani, p. 65)

Only Victor Hugo has spoken: the other men stammer. Someone may resemble him in his beard, in the length of his forehead, in his hard, scissors-defying hair, which is the terror of barbers: and one may resemble him in his concern to play a part as a grandfather or as a politician. But if I open a book by Victor Hugo at home, I see a mountain, a sea, whatever you want, except for something that other men can compare themselves to. (July 13, C.E.1893; Vergani, p. 66)

• The blessed solitude in which one can finally thoroughly wipe one's nose. (Sept. 11, C.E.1893; Vergani, p. 66)
• When he listened to the speeches of the women he seemed to be asleep, but every now and then he made a little movement with his long nonsense hunter ears. (September 15, C.E.1893; Vergani, p. 66)
• The smell of ink is enough to make my dreams die. (September 15, C.E.1893; Vergani, p. 66)
• Distinguished critic, I understand your criticism very well. Know, let it be said between us, that I don't always like myself either. (October 14, C.E.1893; Vergani, p. 67)
• children should be optional apparitions. When Fantec sees me again a fortnight later, he tells me that I have grown up. (February 4, C.E.1894; Vergani, p. 72)

If you think well of me, you have to say it as soon as possible because, you know, this will also pass. (February 23, C.E.1894; Vergani, p. 73)

• And the grasshopper that we decapitate and that, without losing their heads for so little, fly out of the window with a stroke of the wing? (March 1, C.E.1893; Vergani, p. 73)
• I will love you long enough to recognize that your pretty mole is but a wart. (March 2, C.E.1893; Vergani, p. 73)
• I would be anarchist if I were unhappy. But I have nothing to complain about. How could one be both anarchic and satisfied? (March 6, C.E.1894; Vergani, p. 74)
• A farmer is a tree trunk that can move. (March 6, C.E.1894; Vergani, p. 74)

Yesterday's glory no longer counts, today's is too bland, and I only want tomorrow's. (March 20, C.E.1894; Vergani, p. 74)

• Our friendship could no longer go on: we had poured too much into each other. (March 29, C.E.1894; Vergani, p. 74)
• Friends. We see each other too much, we see each other less, we don't see each other anymore. (April 9, C.E.1894; Vergani, p. 74)
• Man is an animal that rolls its eyes and sees only the spiders of the ceiling. (April 10, C.E.1894; Vergani, p. 74)
• You have to let your prose cool like a cream before tasting it. (May 7, C.E.1894; Vergani, p. 75)

When the blackbird sees the grape harvesters enter the vineyard, he is especially surprised that they are not as afraid of the scarecrow as he is. (May 9, C.E.1894; Vergani, p. 75)

• Our love for the countryside: a rustic flash in the pan. (May 11, C.E.1894; Vergani, p. 75)
• It's not enough to be happy! It is also necessary that others are not. (May 16, 1894; Vergani, p. 75)
• My literature is like a series of letters addressed to myself, which I allow you to read. (May 17, C.E.1894; Vergani, p. 76)
• Finally here I am bald. What was my hair used for? They were certainly not an embellishment, and I was to them a prey to an ignoble being, the barber, who breathed his contempt in my face, and caressed me like a mistress, and slapped me on the cheek like a priest. (May 29, C.E.1894; Vergani, p. 76)
• The thought of being thirty exhausts me. I have a whole dead life behind me. In front of me is an opaque existence in which I foresee nothing. I feel old, and sad like an old man. (May 29, C.E.1894; Vergani, p. 76)
• My literature is a continual attempt to rectify what I feel in life, like someone feverishly consulting a book to know what needs to be done to revive the drowned man lying on the shore. (May 30, C.E.1894; Vergani, p. 77)
• All animals speak, except the parrot which "can speak". (June 14, C.E.1894; Vergani, p. 77)
• The moment the condemned person has his head stuck in the guillotine, there should be a silence before the blade falls. A Republican Guard should come out of the ranks and hand the executioner an envelope. The executioner should say to the condemned, "It is your grace!" and at the same time he should drop the blade. The condemned man would thus die happily. (June 22, C.E.1894; Vergani, p. 77)
• Small white clouds rise over there as if shearing wool on the back of hills. (July 1, C.E.1894; Vergani, p. 77)
• To be successful, you have to add water to your wine, until there is no more wine. (July 3, C.E.1894)
• The hand that writes must always try to ignore the reading eye. (July 7, C.E.1894; Vergani, p. 78)
• I have my brain like a fresh nut and I'm waiting for a hammer blow that has to open it. (July 23, C.E.1894; Vergani, p. 79)
• Faced with the stupidity of painters one wants to learn to draw before one dies. (July 23, C.E.1894; Vergani, p. 79)

I am a clock whose pendulum swings tirelessly from pride to humility: but, solid on my legs, I keep my balance and remain standing. (November 3, C.E.1894; Vergani, pp. 81-82) One cannot be cured of the sickness of writing except by being truly, mortally, and dying. (February 13, C.E.1895; Vergani, p. 89)

• E Dante, who faints every moment! (March 10, C.E.1895; Vergani, p. 92)
• Writing is a way of speaking without being interrupted. (April 13, 1895; Vergani, p. 95)
• roosters have apoplectic crests. (May 12, C.E.1895; Vergani, p. 95)
• Return to Paris. Paris smells like square carriages. (July 19, C.E.1895; Vergani, p. 95)
• Criticism is the art of reproaching others for not having the qualities we think we have. (July 29, C.E.1895; Vergani, p. 95)
• Cheerful as when it's raining and you know a friend is out and he's taking it all out. (August 10, C.E.1895; Vergani, p. 95)
• When one reads the story of an exemplary life, such as that of Balzac, one always arrives at the story of death. So, what good is it to be exemplary? (August 27, C.E.1895; Vergani, p. 96)
• Women's breasts are shaped like large insecticidal powder bellows. (September 19, C.E.1895; Vergani, p. 96)
• A truly free man is one who knows how to refuse an invitation to dinner without giving pretexts. (November 25, C.E.1895)
• I will also sign the petition for pardon for Oscar Wilde, provided that he gives his word of honor not to write any more. (December 6, C.E.1895; Vergani, p. 98)
• The mimosa is, among flowers, what the canary is among birds. (February 20, C.E.1896; Vergani, p. 108)
• The word is the excuse of thought. (17 April 1896)
• If I had talent, I would be imitated. If I were imitated, I would become fashionable. If I became fashionable, I would quickly go out of style. It is better, then, that I have no talent. (April 21, C.E.1896; Vergani, p. 108)
• To ward off the storm, all kinds of cowardice can be committed: praying to God, or pretending to work, or saving the fly that was about to burn at the flame of the candle. (June 6, C.E.1896; Vergani, p. 109)

I would like to be one of those men who had few things to say and who said them in a few words. (July 9, C.E.1896; Vergani, p. 109)

• If you were to announce to me the death of my little girl whom I love so much, and in your words there was a picturesque one, I could not hear it without being fascinated by it. (July 9, C.E.1896; Vergani, pp. 109-110)
• Glory is no more than a colonial genre. (July 18, C.E.1896; Vergani, p. 110)
• If you had been a friend or relative of Verlaine, I would have slapped him without a doubt. A humble reader in the midst of an anonymous crowd, I know only the immortal poet. My joy is to love him, my duty is to absolve him for the evil he has done to others. (August C.E.1896; Vergani, p. 111)
• The hare. The subtle sound of the falling leaf puts her on her alert. She is as anxious as we are when we hear our furniture creaking in the night. (September C.E.1896; Vergani, p. 111)

Jules Renard (F. Vallotton, C.E.1898)

• The greatest man is only a child whom life has deceived. (October 17, C.E.1896; Vergani, p. 111)
• phonographs have a grandmother's voice. (November 18, C.E.1896; Vergani, p. 114)
• Rousseau, I read him in my slumber, and I want to suppress in myself all that made me slumber about him. (December 16, C.E.1896; Vergani, p. 117)
• Provincial walls exude resentment. (December 30, C.E.1896; Vergani, p. 117)
• And these old women, whom I have known as girls! Am I so old too? How did they wither like that? (May 13, C.E.1897; Vergani, p. 124)
• The trees are perhaps the only ones who know the mystery of water in depth. (May 22, C.E.1897; Vergani, p. 124)
• The bird does not perch on the rose bush because there is a rose: it perches on it because it has seen lice. (June 9, C.E.1897; Vergani, p. 126)
• Her soul put belly. (June 16, C.E.1897; Vergani, p. 127)
• fear of death makes one love the work that is all life. (July 10, C.E.1897; Vergani, p. 131)
• If you could re-read me before reading me, you would love me much more. (July 30, C.E.1897; Vergani, p. 132)
• My jokes will make a fortune, I won't. (July 30, C.E.1897; Vergani, p. 132)
• God, who understands and forgives everything, will refuse to open the door of heaven to me if I have made a mistake in French. (September 6, C.E.1897; Vergani, p. 132)
• Some men appear to have married only to prevent their wives from marrying others. (September 29, C.E.1897; p. 133)

Old age is when you start saying, "I've never felt so young." (September 30, C.E.1897)

• The last verses of Verlaine. It's no longer a piece of writing: it's a dice game made with words. (October 1, C.E.1897; Vergani, p. 133)
• actresses are very willing to play the part of an old woman but not a part of a mature woman. (November 16, C.E.1897; Vergani, p. 133)
• A bad book is always better than a good comedy. (November 16, C.E.1897; Vergani, p. 133)
• You don't die. death is a kind of brood life. (December 23, C.E.1897; Vergani, p. 135)
• wrinkles are nothing but broadly engraved smiles. (December 25, C.E.1897; Vergani, p. 135)
• Mallarmé is also untranslatable into French. (March 1, C.E.1898; Vergani, p. 144)
• My will is starting to have a bit of wrinkles. (March 24, C.E.1898; Vergani, p. 144)

I just need a little bit of glory, just enough to not look like an imbecile when I walk through the streets of my village. (April C.E.1898; Vergani, p. 145)

• I can swim just enough to restrain myself from saving others. (July 20, C.E.1898; Vergani, p. 149)
• If you want to make sure you're always doing your duty, do what you find unpleasant. (August 15, C.E.1898)

Between the humanity of the shepherd and the humanity of his dog there is but a difference as small as a leap of a flea. (October 1, C.E.1898; Vergani, p. 149)

• Both I and the poor pig will not be appreciated until after we die. (October 1, C.E.1898; Vergani, p. 149)
• My goodness is a moonlight that doesn't warm. (October 1, C.E.1898; Vergani, p. 149)

The humorist is a man of very bad humour. (November 4, C.E.1898; Vergani, p. 149)

• I am a writer whose only desire for perfection prevents me from being great. (January 15, C.E.1899; Vergani, p. 151)
• The cat is the life of furniture. (February 11, C.E.1899; Vergani, p. 151)
• Everything we are we put in our first book. Later on, we only pluck out the weeds of our faults and cultivate our first qualities, when we really manage to do something. (May 1, C.E.1899; Vergani, p. 152)
• At the bottom of all patriotism is war: that's why I'm not a patriot. (June 14, C.E.1899; Vergani, p. 153)
• If the house of happiness were to be built, the largest room would be the waiting room. (August 1, C.E.1899)

Si l'on bâtissait la maison du bonheur, la plus grande pièce serait la salle d'attente. {

• The [[hare]'s lair, even if the hare is absent, is always full of fear. (September 23, C.E.1899; Vergani, p. 155)
• A bit of profanity emphasizes talent. (October 26, C.E.1899; Vergani, p. 155)
• If you remember me with a statue, make a hole in it so that the birds can come and drink it. (December 10, C.E.1899; Vergani, p. 156)

I'm afraid I don't love the world just because the world isn't at my feet. (January 2, C.E.1900; Vergani, p. 157) Only egoist truly suffers and always suffers. (January 11, C.E.1900; Vergani, p. 158) When I'm next to a woman, I immediately feel that slightly melancholic pleasure you get when watching the water flow, from the top of a bridge. (February 14, C.E.1900; Vergani, p. 163)

• I proceed through life like a mole. From time to time, I drop some dirt. A brief clearing. Then, back in the dark. (May 10, C.E.1900; Vergani, p. 168)
• The peasants carry their heavy hands as if they were carrying old tools. (June 2, C.E.1900; Vergani, p. 169)
• I can't look at a tree without being crushed by the universe. (June 16, C.E.1900; Vergani, p. 169)
• Our goodness is but our badness that sleeps. (June 2, C.E.1900; Vergani, p. 169)
• Those who have spoken best of death are all dead. (August 9, C.E.1900; Vergani, p. 172)
• The white blackbird exists, but it is so white that you can't see it. The black blackbird is but its shadow. (August 11, C.E.1900; Vergani, p. 172)
• In some friends there is nothing pleasant but their virginity. When you got married to them, things don't go well anymore. (October 9, C.E.1900; Vergani, p. 173)
• remorse go back and forth dressed in a small carabiniere suit. (October 9, C.E.1900; Vergani, p. 173)
• People who have themselves cremated think that, reduced to ashes, they will escape from God. (October 12, 1900; Vergani, p. 174)
• Barring complications, he will die. (October 12, C.E.1900; Vergani, p. 174)
• The work of others disgusts me, and I don't like my own. That's my strength and my weakness. (October 12, C.E.1900; Vergani, p. 174)
• [Leaf|leaves]] move like the lips of a child who doesn't quite know his lesson and who is looking for what he has to say. (December 17, C.E.1900; Vergani, p. 175)
• Life leads to anything, as long as you get out of it. (January 8, C.E.1901; Vergani, p. 177)
• That little girl seems to be in a cage behind her grandiose undulating harp, and she keeps scratching the bars of her cage with her fingers. (January 28, C.E.1901; Vergani, p. 178)

The only sure things about medicine are the deceptive hopes it gives us. (February 15, 1901; Vergani, p. 179)

• You go to visit a sick person to tell you about all the illnesses you have had or that others have had. (February 18, C.E.1901; Vergani, p. 180)
• Today I practice laughing for a good hour, to deserve the reputation of a gay writer that they wanted to give me. (February 18, C.E.1901; Vergani, p. 180)
• It is not good for a masterpiece to be fully known, at the first try. Future generations must be given time to mature. Otherwise, they change their minds. (February 18, C.E.1901; Vergani, p. 181)

Tristan Bernard must be more and more persuaded that no one is worthy to tie his shoelaces because he never knots them. (February 18, 1901; Vergani, p. 181)

• She is the most faithful of all the wives: in fact, she has not deceived any of her lovers. (October 23, C.E.1981; Vergani, p. 184)

Goodness is something that is not assimilated. The fruit is good, but the stone is bitter. (November 7, C.E.1901; Vergani, p. 187)

• A fly is dirtier in winter than in summer. It seems that she stayed in our room not because of the heat, but only because she was attracted by our rotten smell. (November 25, C.E.1901; Vergani, p. 190)
• old age comes abruptly, like snow. One morning, when you wake up, you realize that everything is white. (December 9, C.E.1901; Vergani, p. 190)
• The poets take the pleasure of sitting on Olympus; but they are too small, and their feet do not touch the ground. (December 11, C.E.1901; Vergani, p. 191)
• My worn pants on the knee denounce that every night I look to see if there is someone under the bed. (December 22, C.E.1901; Vergani, p. 191)
• [Disease|disease]] are the great maneuvers of death. (January 20, C.E.1902; Vergani, p. 192)
• I know that literature does not feed the man who engages in it. Luckily I never have much of an appetite. (February 11, C.E.1902; Vergani, p. 192)
• The kangaroo, giant flea. (April 30, C.E.1902; Vergani, p. 195)
• First Communion: the children all seem to have been injured in their left arm. (May 7, C.E.1902; Vergani, p. 195)
• Brain. Man walks with his roots in his head. (May 23, C.E.1902; Vergani, p. 196)
• Death could be the dream if, at a stroke, one could open an eye. (May 24, C.E.1902; Vergani, p. 196)

The angle of the neckline of a pale young woman's dress, which opens as if to breathe in some air, disturbs us more than so many obscenities. (June 14, C.E.1902; Vergani, p. 197)

• The layman is the man who tirelessly seeks God and never finds Him. (June 16, C.E.1902; Vergani, p. 198)
• Fidelity, during life, is nothing: but what a humiliation it is to die and appear before God without ever having deceived one's wife! (June 16, C.E.1902; Vergani, p. 198)

Observe how much importance is attached to the little one, and how authoritative is his tone when he is quite sure in his heart that he is curing an insignificant disease. (June 23, C.E.1902; Vergani, p. 198)

• With my lantern, I found a man: myself. I look at him. (June 23, C.E.1902; Vergani, p. 198)
• «Cuckold»: strange that this little word doesn't have the feminine. (August 2, C.E.1902)
• One year is over. A slice has been cut off at time, and time remains whole. (December 31, C.E.1902; Vergani, p. 199)
• His accomplishments say he's talented, and his fiascos say he's a thinker. (January 25, C.E.1903; Vergani, p. 200)
• There are people like that boring who make us lose a day in five minutes. (February 1, C.E.1903)

Il y a des gens si ennuyeux qu'ils vous font perdre une journée en cinq minutes. {

• That woman shows her breasts and believes she is offering her heart. (March 2, C.E.1903; Vergani, p. 200)

[Léon Blum]] is very intelligent but doesn't have an ounce of wit. It is something that pleases those who, like me, believe that they have spirits and are not very sure that they are intelligent. (March 3, C.E.1903; Vergani, p. 201) irony is an element of happiness. (March 6, C.E.1903; Vergani, p. 201)

• Rostand, the poet of crowds who think they are intelligent. (July 12, C.E.1903; Vergani, p. 207)
• When you are sick the face immediately begins to decompose and the earth of which we are made begins to resurface. (July 12, C.E.1903; Vergani, p. 207)
• Pulling their truth out of the well, the prying people bathe everywhere. (August 1, C.E.1903; Vergani, p. 209)
• [Peasants]] look too much at the cemetery and not enough at death. (August 1, C.E.1903; Vergani, p. 209)
• [Peasants]] fight dirt only with sweat. (August 1, C.E.1903; Vergani, p. 209)
• Every year, one defect more. Here's our only progress. (October 10, C.E.1903; Vergani, p. 209)
• My mother coughs all the time, not because she needs to cough, but to let people know she's there. (December 30, C.E.1903; Vergani, p. 211)

If we thought of all the fortunes we have had without deserving them, we would no longer dare to complain. (January 30, C.E.1904; Vergani, p. 216)

• funerals also have something good about them: they serve to reconcile families. (January 30, C.E.1904; Vergani, p. 216)
• The moralists who extol work make me think of those fellows who have been deceived by the lure of a fairground sideshow and, in revenge, try to get others in. (March 11, C.E.1904; Vergani, p. 216)
• I'm not made for fighting. I'm made to kill people by shooting in the backside. (April 19, C.E.1904; Vergani, p. 217)

To an eye that looks a little into things, modesty is but a more visible form of vanity. (May 23, C.E.1904; Vergani, p. 218)

• Peasant women are like the flowers of the field that, if you smell them, either taste of nothing or stink. (May 23, C.E.1904; Vergani, p. 218)
• As mayor I have to worry about the good maintenance of the roads in the countryside: as a poet I would prefer them to be neglected. (May 28, C.E.1904; Vergani, p. 218)

The style must purify itself like water that becomes clear, by dint of labor, and as it were, by dint of being consumed on the pebbles. (June 8, C.E.1904; Vergani, p. 218) Let us weep over poverty, but let us not be moved by avarice, even if it is the avarice of a poor man. (August 16, C.E.1904; Vergani, p. 219)

• Ever since I met the real peasants, every bucolic has seemed like a lie to me: even mine. (September 19, C.E.1904; Vergani, pp. 219-220)

That woman had loved her so much that, when one came too close to her, one could hear, at the bottom of the delicate shell of her ear, a distant rustling of words of love. (December 4, C.E.1904; Vergani, p. 223)

• In that face marked with smallpox, it seems that there is something written in Braille, with characters for the blind. (December 5, C.E.1904; Vergani, p. 223)
• Yes. You should be socialist and at the same time earn a lot of money. (December 15, C.E.1904; Vergani, p. 224)
• I know at last what distinguishes man from beasts; financial difficulties. (December 16, C.E.1904; Vergani, p. 224)
• When I think that maybe I wouldn't be socialist if I could have written a play in three acts! (January 9, C.E.1905; Vergani, p. 225)
• Slavs: writers who write between the lines instead of writing on them. (January 9, C.E.1905; Vergani, p. 225)
• I have an anticlerical soul and a monk's heart. (January 24, C.E.1905; Vergani, p. 227)
• Feminism. Yes, I think it is right, before giving a woman a child, to ask her if she wants one. (March 2, C.E.1905; Vergani, p. 229)
• Free thinker. Thinker would suffice. (June 26, C.E.1905)
• If you fear loneliness, try not to be righteous. (July 10, C.E.1905)
• What about the wind? All the gusts of wind come to moan at his door. (October 4, C.E.1905; Vergani, p. 232)
• I live locked in my laziness like inside a prison. (October 9, C.E.1905; Vergani, p. 232)
• I don't write too much because I never risk too much. (December 8, C.E.1905; Vergani, p. 232)
• [[Posterity] is trusted so much. But why should the men of tomorrow be less stupid than those of today? (January 24, C.E.1906; Vergani, p. 233)
• The truest word, the most exact word, the most meaningful is the word "nothing". (January 26, C.E.1906; Vergani, p. 233)

A cat that sleeps twenty hours a day out of twenty-four is perhaps the best thing for God. (January 26, C.E.1906) To do theatre, you have to have the enthusiasm of lying. (February 1, C.E.1906; Vergani, p. 234)

• The muddy water of memory, where everything that falls is hidden. If you move it, something comes back to the surface. (February 10, C.E.1906; Vergani, p. 234)
• Woman should live only one season out of four. It should reappear every year. (February 10, C.E.1906; Vergani, p. 234)
• Actresses. You must always learn the art of stepping over the hands that offer you to kiss. (February 12, C.E.1906; Vergani, p. 234)
• The old fish-faced actress always tries to talk to you against the light. (February 13, C.E.1906; Vergani, p. 234)

The wisdom of the peasant is only ignorance that dares not express itself. (February 14, C.E.1906; Vergani, p. 234)

• They are a dry tree that is just waiting for other people's leaves. (March 5, C.E.1906; Vergani, p. 236)
• dormers look like the square eyes of rooftops. (March 5, C.E.1906; Vergani, p. 236)
• I don't know if it is possible to correct one's own faults, but I do know that one can be disgusted by one's own qualities especially when one finds them in others. (March 10, C.E.1906; Vergani, p. 236)
• Your page on autumn must give you the same pleasure as walking on dead leaves. (March 10, C.E.1906; Vergani, p. 236)
• Imagine life without death. Out of desperation, people would try to kill themselves every day. (March 13, C.E.1906; Vergani, p. 236)
• Some friends distrust us as if they believe that we know the depths of their souls. (March 13, C.E.1906; Vergani, p. 236)
• I have a forehead like hydrocephalus, and my ideas disappear every moment underwater. Then they come back to the surface like the drowned. (March 21, C.E.1906; Vergani, p. 236)
• Sometimes I don't have blood in my veins except to get bad blood. (March 24, C.E.1906; Vergani, p. 237)
• I don't bend, but I break. (June 19, C.E.1906; Vergani, p. 238)
• The truth I pulled up from my well can't get out of its chain. (June 19, C.E.1906; Vergani, p. 239)
• People don't talk about me anymore except in relation to others. (June 27, C.E.1906; Vergani, p. 239)
• To be happy is to be envied. Now there's always someone who envies us. It's a matter of finding out. (July 1, C.E.1906; Vergani, p. 239)
• equality is the utopia of envy. Yes, but we will suppress it by suppressing the reasons for our pride. (August 7, C.E.1906; Vergani, p. 239)
• The peasants do not envy the owner of the castle: but they envy the neighbor who has made his fortune. (August 9, C.E.1906; Vergani, p. 239)
• Continuous work is as stupid as continuous rest. (August 16, C.E.1906; Vergani, p. 241)
• Our dream bumps against the mystery like a wasp against a glass. Less merciful than man, God never opens the window. (August 16, C.E.1906; Vergani, p. 241)
• To romanticize a peasant is almost an insult to his misery. The peasant has no history, or at least no story from a novel. (September 12, C.E.1906; Vergani, p. 241)
• Every moment I turn off and on again. My soul is full of unlit matches. (September 18, C.E.1906; Vergani, p. 242)
• The sun rises before me, but I lie down after him. We are tied and drawn. (September 24, C.E.1906; Vergani, p. 242)
• I am envious in nature, but I have never had the patience to be ambitious. (October 9, C.E.1906; Vergani, p. 242)
• My books are so far removed from me that I am already a kind of posterity to them. This is my precise judgment: I will never read them again. (November 29, C.E.1906; Vergani, p. 245)
• The bat flies with its rain cover. (December 1, C.E.1906; Vergani, p. 245)
• You Must Not Love Shakespeare then very late, when one has a disgust for perfection. (December 4, C.E.1906; Vergani, p. 246)
• A journal editor will give you a good hour to explain why he doesn't have time to read your manuscript. But at least he had that hour to read it. (December 10, C.E.1906; Vergani, p. 247)
• Eulogy funeral. Half of this praise would have sufficed for him when he was alive. (December 16, C.E.1906; Vergani, p. 248)
• A socialist independent to the point of not being afraid to make luxuries. (December 19, C.E.1906; Vergani, p. 248)
• The year has too long an agony. You are sad on December 20, and on the 31st you don't notice that the year dies. (December 20, C.E.1906; Vergani, p. 248)
• The penguin with the tips of its wings in its waistcoat pocket. (December 22, C.E.1906; Vergani, p. 248)
• To have the dreams light asleep with eyes full of moon. (December 27, C.E.1906; Vergani, p. 248)
• A man of character does not have a good character. (January 2, C.E.1907; Vergani, p. 249)
• As soon as I happen to work a little, I immediately believe that everything is due to me and the slightest annoyance seems to me an injustice. (January 4, C.E.1907; p. 249)
• Experience is a useful gift that serves no purpose. (January 8, C.E.1907; Vergani, p. 249)
• Native country, mortal country. (June 19, C.E.1907; Vergani, p. 252)
• The country of birth is all here: a minute of emotion every now and then, but not always. (August 10, C.E.1907; Vergani, p. 253)
• You need to write how you speak, if you speak well. (August 22, C.E.1907; Vergani, p. 253)
• Car is boredom that becomes vertigo. They immediately ask you how much horsepower the engine has. Let's say 15,000 and let's not talk about it anymore. (August 29, C.E.1907; Vergani, p. 253)

Sully Prudhomme is a writer of equal depth. You bathe in it without fear and always hit rock bottom. (September 10, C.E.1907; Vergani, p. 253)

• The blush spreads on a maiden's cheek like the fogging of breath on a glass of cold water. (September 11, C.E.1907; Vergani, p. 253)
• The moon is sexless. (September 20, C.E.1907; Vergani, p. 254)

If there were no pride, life would be a pitiful thing. (October 23, C.E.1907; Vergani, p. 255)

• I'm passionate for a few minutes a day, but no woman takes advantage of it. (January 7, C.E.1908; Vergani, p. 261)
• Migraines. In the morning I wake up with a huge head. (January 8, C.E.1908; Vergani, p. 261)

It should not be believed that laziness is fruitless. It makes you live intensely, like a hare listening. We swim in laziness as well as in water, but every now and then we touch the seaweed of remorse. (January 9, C.E.1908; Vergani, p. 261)

• Oh, something new! Something new, even if it were to be my death. (January 19, C.E.1908; Vergani, p. 261)
• Collectivism! But talent can only be individual. (February 4, C.E.1908; Vergani, p. 262)
• Forty-four years is the age at which one begins to no longer be able to hope to live twice as long. (February 21, C.E.1908; Vergani, p. 262)
• The arm I would like to reach out to my manuscript is paralyzed. There is nothing that disgusts me more than the sketches of my manuscripts. They look like crushed eggs before they were hatched. (July 31, C.E.1908; Vergani, p. 263)
• Anatole France, after all, is only the first of the amateurs. (October 15, C.E.1908; Vergani, p. 263)
• In style, the image is a germ of corruption. (October 30, C.E.1908; Vergani, p. 263)
• There are times when everything goes your way. There is no need to be afraid. These are moments that pass. (October 31, C.E.1908; Vergani, p. 263)
• Everything tires. Even the image, which is so helpful, ends up tiring. A style without images would be a superior style, but you only get there after long turns and after many excesses. (May 4, C.E.1909; Vergani, p. 269)
• You should write how you breathe. A harmonious breath, with its slowness and its suddenly hurried rhythms, a natural breath, here, the symbol of beautiful style. (May 4, C.E.1909; Vergani, p. 270)

To the reader one owes only one thing: clarity. The reader must accept originality, irony, violence, even if he dislikes them. He has no right to judge. It could be said that the matter does not concern him. (May 4, C.E.1909; Vergani, p. 270)

• The artist only counts on the unexpected. (May 7, C.E.1909; Vergani, p. 270)
• Village. Certain neighborhoods are infected with hatred, pride, envy, malice. Only death can heal them. (May 8, C.E.1909; Vergani, p. 270)
• I see nothing in my life but reasons not to write a novel. (May 24, C.E.1909; Vergani, p. 271)
• The "beautiful descriptions" put on me the taste for three-line descriptions. (May 24, C.E.1909; Vergani, p. 272)
• I am sure that a humanity chaste would be infinitely superior. (May 24, C.E.1909; Vergani, p. 272)

If chastity is not a virtue, it is certainly a strength. (June 5, C.E.1909)

• I climb up a chair to rummage through the bookcase, and if I see a torn book, I always take it. (June 16, C.E.1909; Vergani, p. 272)
• Mourning: The black lie. (August 22, C.E.1909; Vergani, p. 274)
• Life is neither long nor short. It has some delays. (August 22, C.E.1909; Vergani, p. 274)
• When you're about to die, you know fish. (November 23, C.E.1909; Vergani, p. 276)
• A more unpleasant thing than careerism is the display of modesty. (December 10, C.E.1909; p. 278)

When you start looking it straight in the face, death is easy to understand. (December 10, C.E.1909; Vergani, p. 278)

• I am ill, and I would like to say profound, somewhat historical things, such as my friends would repeat; But I'm too tired of nerves. (December 10, C.E.1909; Vergani, p. 278)
• You have to be sick for a whole year to understand how long a year! (December 10, C.E.1909; Vergani, p. 278)
• The mystery of the death is more than enough. All that goes into it is nothing more than a huge theatrical plot. (December 10, C.E.1909; Vergani, p. 279)
• Snow on the water: silence on silence. (January 26, C.E.1910; Vergani, p. 280)
• Flood. It's always smaller than my little imagination imagines. (January 26, C.E.1910; Vergani, p. 280)
• Dreamer like a cat looking at the bright rays of a lamp on the ceiling. (February 16, C.E.1910; Vergani, p. 281)
• It is tremendous how hard it is to take an interest in the ailments of others when you are well. (January 26, C.E.1910; Vergani, p. 281)
• Humor: modesty, play of the spirit. It is the moral and daily hygiene of the soul. I have a high moral and literary idea of humour. Imagination makes you swerve. Sensitivity makes you bland. Humor is, in short, reason. The regularized man. No definition was enough for me. On the other hand, humor has it all. (February 23, C.E.1910; Vergani, p. 282)
• Between my brain and me there is always a layer that I can't penetrate. (February 23, C.E.1910; Vergani, p. 282)
• By the way, I'm done. I could start again and it would be better: but no one would notice. It's better that it's over. (February 27, C.E.1910; Vergani, p. 283)

I don't understand anything about life, but I'm not saying it's impossible for God to understand anything. (March 6, C.E.1910; Vergani, p. 283)

• I have the apparent, docile and resigned life of a weathervane spinning on the roof. (March 6, C.E.1910; Vergani, p. 283)
• Those who do not have the disease of scruples should not even dream of being honest. (March 15, C.E.1910; Vergani, p. 283)
• I'm not sincere even when I say I'm not sincere.

Quotes from the Diary:

• I have read a few pages of this diary. At the end of the day, it's the best and most useful thing I've done in my life. (Jules Renard, 14 November C.E.1900; Vergani, p. 174)
• This diary empties me. It is not an opera. To make love every day is not to love, either. (Jules Renard, January 1, C.E.1901; Vergani, p. 177)
• This is a diary of abortions. (Jules Renard, December 1, C.E.1906; Vergani, p. 245)

Carrot skin:

Incipit:

Original

— Je parie, dit madame Lepic, qu'Honorine a encore oublié de fermer les poules.
C'est vrai. On peut s'en assurer par la fenêtre. Là-bas, tout au fond de la grande cour, le petit toit aux poules découpe, dans la nuit, le carré noir de sa porte ouverte.
"Félix, si tu allais les fermer?" dit madame Lepic à l'aîné de ses trois enfants.
— Je ne suis pas ici pour m'occuper des poules, dit Félix, garçon pâle, indolent et poltron.
"Et toi, Ernestine?"
"Oh! moi, maman, j'aurais trop peur !
Grand frère Félix et sœur Ernestine lèvent à peine la tête pour répondre. Ils lisent, très intéressés, les coudes sur la table, presque front contre front.
"Dieu, que je suis bête ! dit madame Lepic. Je n'y pensais plus. Poil de Carotte, va fermer les poules !

Frediano Sessi:

"I'll bet," says Mrs. Lepic, "that Honorine has forgotten to close the hens again."
It's true. You can check it by looking out the window. In the night, down there, at the end of the courtyard, the chicken coop highlights the black square of the open door.
"Félix, what if you went and closed them?" – says Mrs. Lepic to the eldest of her three children.
"I'm not here to look after the chickens," replies Félix, a pale, lazy boy with armchairs.
"And you, Ernestine?"
–Oh! I, Mom, would be too afraid! Félix, the elder brother, and Ernestine, the sister, barely raise their heads to answer. They read, with great interest, the elbows on the table, almost forehead to forehead.
"God, how foolish I am! – says Mrs. Lepic. "I didn't think about it anymore. Carrot skin, you go and close the chickens!

Rossana Campo:

"I'll bet," says Madame Lepic, "that Honorine has again forgotten to close the chickens. It's true. Just look out the window. Down there, at the end of the courtyard, the open door of the chicken coop cuts out a black square in the night. "Felix, are you going to close them?" – says Madame Lepic to the eldest of her sons. "I'm not here to look after the chickens," says Felix, a pale, lazy, lazy boy. "And you, Ernestine?" "Oh, I, ma', I'm too afraid! Felix and Ernestine barely raise their heads to answer. They are completely absorbed in reading, their elbows on the table and their foreheads almost touching. "God, how stupid I am! – says Madame Lepic. "I hadn't thought about it. Peldicarota, you go and close the chickens!

References:

• Leaning on their elbows, they follow with their gaze the mounds of the tunnels dug by the moles, which zigzag at the edge of the field, like the veins of the elderly. Sometimes they lose sight of them, sometimes they come out into an esplanade, where the devastating cuscuta spreads its beard of red filaments. Here the mole tunnels form a small village of huts built like those of the Indians. (2010, p. 31)
• Not everyone can be orphan. (2010, p. 126)
• Twilight is deceiving, as everyone knows. Things show their uncertain profiles. The flight of a gnat is as disturbing as the approach of a thunderstorm. (2010, p. 132)

Quotes about Carrot Hair:

• Every moment Poil de carotte reappears to me. We live together, but I hope to die before him. From (Jules Renard)
• Poil de carotte is a wrong, incomplete, badly composed book, because it came out of me in a flutter. From (Jules Renard)
• I can say that, thanks to Poil de carotte, I will have doubled my life. From (Jules Renard)

Bibliography:

• Jules Renard, Diario C.E.1887-1910, translation and afterword by Orio Vergani, edited by Guido Vergani, SE, Milan, C.E.1989. ISBN 88-7710-141-5
• Jules Renard, Pel di carota, translated by Frediano Sessi, Giunti Editore, Florence, C.E.2010. ISBN 8809757483
• Jules Renard, Peldicarota, translated by Rossana Campo, Giangiacomo Feltrinelli Editore, Milan C.E.2007. ISBN 9788807821936

Other projects: