“There is only one happiness in life, to love and be loved.”   George Sand

Today, July 1, is the birthday of George Sand, the French novelist, memoirist, and source of inspiration to many of her fellow writers. Yes, George was a nom de plume. Her true and far lovelier name: Aurore Dupin. Aurore – to be named after the dawn – what a gift! She was born in 1804 and her thoughts still inspire:

“Work is not man’s punishment. It is his reward and his strength and his pleasure.”

“Butterflies are but flowers that blew away one sunny day when Nature was feeling at her most inventive and fertile.”

“Let us accept truth, even when it surprises us and alters our views.”

“Art for art’s sake is an empty phrase. Art for the sake of truth, art for the sake of the good and the beautiful, that is the faith I am searching for.”

“Guard well within yourself that treasure, kindness. Know how to give without hesitation, how to lose without regret, how to acquire without meanness.”

“The capacity for passion is both cruel and divine.”

“Simplicity is the most difficult thing to secure in this world; it is the last limit of experience and the last effort of genius.”

“He who draws noble delights from sentiments of poetry is a true poet, though he has never written a line in all his life.”

“Try to keep your soul young and quivering right up to old age.”

“It is a mistake to regard age as a downhill grade toward dissolution. The reverse is true. As one grows older, one climbs with surprising strides.”

“Discouragement seizes us only when we can no longer count on chance.”

“The world will know and understand me someday. But if that day does not arrive, it does not greatly matter. I shall have opened the way for other women.”

“Life resembles a novel more often than novels resemble life.”

“The artist vocation is to send light into the human heart.”

And now, energized and emboldened, let’s all write on!

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