Guy de Maupassant

"Conversation. What is it? A Mystery! It's the art of never seeming bored, of touching everything with interest, of pleasing with trifles, of being fascinating with nothing at all."

Also said:

"Patriotism is a kind of religion; it is the egg from which wars are hatched." Guy de Maupassant

“There is only one good thing in life, and that is love.” ― Guy de Maupassant, The Complete Short Stories of de Maupassant

“A sick thought can devour the body's flesh more than fever or consumption.” ― Guy de Maupassant, Le Horla et autres contes fantastiques

"Every government has as much of a duty to avoid war as a ship's captain has to avoid a shipwreck." Guy de Maupassant

Guy de Maupassant also said, "The simplest of women are wonderful liars who can extricate themselves from the most difficult dilemmas with a skill bordering on genius." But then he was a Guy.

Leo Tolstoy used Maupassant as the subject for one of his essays on art: The Works of Guy de Maupassant. His stories are second only to Shakespeare in their inspiration of movie adaptations with films ranging from Stagecoach, Oyuki the Virgin and Masculine Feminine.

Friedrich Nietzsche's autobiography mentions him in the following text:

"I cannot at all conceive in which century of history one could haul together such inquisitive and at the same time delicate psychologists as one can in contemporary Paris: I can name as a sample – for their number is by no means small, ... or to pick out one of the stronger race, a genuine Latin to whom I am particularly attached, Guy de Maupassant."