George Sand Quotes

George Sand , a French novelist of the 19th century, was also infamous for her love affairs, her tobacco smoking in public, and dressing in men's clothing.

Selected George Sand Quotations

• Believe in no other God than the one who insists on justice and equality among men.

• Universal suffrage, that is to say the expression of the will of all, whether for good or ill, is a necessary safety-valve. Without it, you will get merely successive outbreaks of civil violence. This wonderful guarantee of security is there to our hands. It is the best counterweight so far discovered.

• There is only one happiness in life, to love and be loved.

• I ask the support of no one, neither to kill someone for me, gather a bouquet, correct a proof, nor to go with me to the theater. I go there on my own, as a man, by choice; and when I want flowers, I go on foot, by myself, to the Alps.

• Once my heart was captured, reason was shown the door, deliberately and with a sort of frantic joy. I accepted everything, I believed everything, without struggle, without suffering, without regret, without false shame. How can one blush for what one adores?

• My profession is to be free.

• Liszt said to me today that God alone deserves to be loved. It may be true, but when one has loved a man it is very different to love God.

• One is happy as a result of one's own efforts, once one knows the necessary ingredients of happiness — simple tastes, a certain degree of courage, self denial to a point, love of work, and, above all, a clear conscience. Happiness is no vague dream, of that I now feel certain.

• Faith is an excitement and an enthusiasm: it is a condition of intellectual magnificence to which we must cling as to a treasure, and not squander on our way through life in the small coin of empty words, or in exact and priggish argument.

• Classification is Ariadne's clue through the labyrinth of nature.

• The mind has no sex.

• [Margaret Fuller on George Sand:] George Sand smokes, wears male attire, wishes to be addressed as Mon frère; perhaps, if she found those who were as brothers indeed, she would not care whether she were a brother or sister.

• The old woman I shall become will be quite different from the woman I am now. Another I is beginning.

• Art is not a study of positive reality, it is the seeking for ideal truth.

• But if these people of the future are better than we are, they will, perhaps, look back at us with feelings of pity and tenderness for struggling souls who once divined a little of what the future would bring.

More About George Sand

• George Sand Biography

About These Quotes

Quote collection assembled by Jone Johnson Lewis.This is an informal collection assembled over many years. I regret that I am not be able to provide the original source if it is not listed with the quote.