Time & Perspective Quote by Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

Colette takes a knife to the literary cult of anguish and twists it with a smile. Calling suffering an "occupation" is the first provocation: pain isn’t just an experience that happens to us, she implies, it’s a job we can overperform. The phrase "incomparable waste of time" refuses the romantic bargain that misery buys depth, virtue, or art. In one stroke, she demotes suffering from sacred rite to bad time management.

The subtext is characteristically Colette: sensual, impatient with moral posturing, alert to how people polish their pain into identity. By pairing "urgent" with "honorable", she suggests there are duties - to the body, to work, to others, to pleasure even - that deserve the energy we spend curating heartbreak. It’s not a denial of hardship so much as a rebellion against the drama of it. The line reads like a corrective to a culture (and a canon) that loves the spectacle of noble torment, especially when women are expected to suffer prettily and privately.

Context sharpens the edge. Colette lived through the Belle Epoque, scandal, divorce, and two world wars, and built a career on observing desire without apology. She knew pain intimately; that’s what makes the dismissal sting. The intent isn’t stoicism; it’s refusal. She’s arguing for agency where people least expect it: not in conquering suffering, but in declining to make it the central project of a life.