I went to collect the few personal belongings which...I held to be invaluable: my cat, my resolve to travel, and my solitude.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of personal connections and values over material possessions.
In this quote, Sidonie Gabrielle Colette reflects on the things she treasures most in life, highlighting that personal belongings such as her cat and her desire for solitude and travel hold greater significance than material wealth. This insight underscores the idea that fulfillment comes from intrinsic values rather than external possessions, suggesting a deep connection between identity, freedom, and the pursuit of personal happiness.
In practice
In a motivational speech about minimalism.
It's so curious: one can resist tears and 'behave' very well in the hardest hours of grief. But then someone makes you a friendly sign behind a window, or one notices that a flower that was in bud only yesterday has suddenly blossomed, or a letter slips from a drawer... and everything collapses.
Sit down and put down everything that comes into your head and then you're a writer. But an author is one who can judge his own stuff's worth, without pity, and destroy most of it.
The only virtue on which I pride myself is my self-doubt; when a writer loses her self-doubt, the time has come to lay aside her pen.
You must not pity me because my sixtieth year finds me still astonished. To be astonished is one of the surest ways of not growing old too quickly.
Truffles must come to the table in their own stock and as you break open this jewel sprung from a poverty-stricken soil, imagine - if you have never visited it - the desolate kingdom where it rules.
I did not look for her, because I was afraid of dispelling the mystery we attach to people whom we know only casually.
Shepherds don't look after sheep because they love them - although I do think some shepherds like their sheep too much. They look after their sheep so they can, first, fleece them and second, turn them into meat. That's much more like the priesthood as I know it.
Last I checked, Bill Gates was worth $50 billion. If the average employed adult, who is walking in a hurry, will pick up a quarter from the sidewalk, but not a dime, then the corresponding amount of money given their relative wealth that Bill Gates would ignore if he saw it lying on the street is $25,000.
To use for our exclusive benefit what is not ours is theft.
All men contain several men inside them, and most of us bounce from one self to another without ever knowing who we are.
No man who knows aught, can be so stupid to deny that all men naturally were born free.
The labor of a human being is not a commodity or article of commerce. You can't weigh the soul of a man with a bar of pig-iron.
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