translation from the French

(Translations) from
JULES RENARD’S JOURNAL: 1887-1910 (Paris: NRF, 1424 pages, 1965)
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dear friends and gentle readers: may I hope you will enjoy reading this wonderful writer as much as I do.
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Butterflies: shawls for little flowers.

A cat’s shadow looks like a tiger.

He wants a civil burial.
"What about speakers?"
"You may speak all you want; I don’t plan to reply."

To a critic: "Yes, yes, you may be right, but it seems to me, you are tougher on me than on yourself."

Sunset: the horizon is red. Festivities must be in full swing there.

The pleasure of being kind to people who are irritated by kindness.

The sleep of the just? But who says the just can sleep?

I understand trees because they don’t reason.

I say all is vanity because my little speech was not a big success.

We experience love with one or two women, friendship with two or three friends, hatred for one enemy, pity for some poor devils, and indifference for the rest of mankind.

The sentiments of a heartless person can always be traced back to a book.

Some people are so boring that they make you waste a whole day in five minutes.

It’s so windy that it’s raining horizontally.

I can sense exactly at which point literature loses its feet and no longer touches life.

How wonderful of a pig to use his head to eat and his tail to speak?

There is no paradise but one must do one’s best to deserve it all the same.

It’s easy being modest if you are somebody, more difficulty if you are nobody.

There are friends; there are no true friends.

Prudence is nothing but a euphemism for fear.

The certainty that one is not alone is reassuring even in a cemetery.

To be clear is a writer’s way of being polite.

It’s common knowledge that he who says "I am a businessman" will be taken in by the one who say, "Me, I don’t have a head for business!"

The nice thing about death is that it delivers us from the thought of death.

We end up not respecting those who are always in complete agreement with us.

I am now more modest but also more proud of my modesty.

As a man, Christ is admirable.
But as God, one can’t help thinking that he could have done much better!