Complete Original Short Stories of Guy De Maupassant
1903

Complete Original Short Stories of Guy De Maupassant
1903
Translated by Henderson A. E.
Guy de Maupassant wrote with a scalpel, not a pen. In these stories, he dissects the French bourgeoisie, the peasantry, and the military with equal precision, exposing the petty cruelties and hypocrisies that polite society conceals. This collection gathers the stories that made him the undisputed master of the form in late nineteenth-century France. His subjects range from the pragmatic calculations of a Normandy farmer's wife to the moral cowardice of respectable travelers who accept a prostitute's sacrifice while despising her for offering it. <br><br>Maupassant observes human nature with clinical detachment and dark humor, revealing the vast distance between how we present ourselves and how we actually behave. His prose is lean, muscular, each sentence building toward inevitable and often devastating conclusions. The Franco-Prussian War provides the backdrop for some of his finest work, but his true subject remains constant: the elaborate fictions we tell ourselves to justify our own smallness. <br><br>The stories in this collection endure because they still sting. They are for readers who crave fiction that holds a mirror up to uncomfortable truths, who prefer their moral complexity unsweetened and their endings unresolved.
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“But I no longer had a taste for anything, a wish for anything, a love for anybody, a desire for anything whatever, any ambition, or any hope.””
— Guy de Maupassant
“I entered literary life as a meteor, and I shall leave it like a thunderbolt."[As quoted in Pol Neveux's introduction, ]””
— Guy de Maupassant
“Some people are Freethinkers from sheer stupidity. My Uncle Sosthenes was one of these. Some people are often religious for the same reason.””
— Guy de Maupassant
“Is it not rather the touch of Love, of Love the Mysterious, who seeks constantly to unite two beings, who tries his strength the instant he has put a man and a woman face to face?””
— Guy de Maupassant
“Death need not be sad, it should be a matter of indifference.””
— Guy de Maupassant
“Then, one by one, they went away, for night was falling on the storm, wrapping in shadows the raging ocean and all the battling elements.””
— Guy de Maupassant
“Several sailors, sheltered behind the curved bottoms of their boats, were watching this battle of the sky and the sea.””
— Guy de Maupassant
“Ah! Those silly songs make us lose our heads; and, believe me, never marry a woman who sings in the country, especially if she sings the song of Musette!””
— Guy de Maupassant
“Monsieur, beware of love! It is lying in ambush everywhere; it is watching for you at every corner; all its snares are laid, all its weapons are sharpened, all its guiles are prepared! Beware of love! Beware of love! It is more dangerous than brandy, bronchitis or pleurisy! It never forgives and makes everybody commit irreparable follies.””
— Guy de Maupassant
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Maupassant, Guy de. Complete Original Short Stories of Guy De Maupassant. Lex, lex-books.com/book/complete-original-short-stories-of-guy-de-maupassant-456e7656-7d34-4a10-a799-7ff1ae8df9e3.Maupassant, G. D. (1903). Complete Original Short Stories of Guy De Maupassant. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/complete-original-short-stories-of-guy-de-maupassant-456e7656-7d34-4a10-a799-7ff1ae8df9e3Maupassant, Guy de. Complete Original Short Stories of Guy De Maupassant. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/complete-original-short-stories-of-guy-de-maupassant-456e7656-7d34-4a10-a799-7ff1ae8df9e3.










