Those pleasures so lightly called physical.

Colette’s line pushes back against the tendency—common in moral, religious, or “refined” discourse—to dismiss bodily enjoyment as merely “physical,” as if that label made it shallow or inferior. By stressing how “lightly” the term is applied, she implies that sensual experience is complex: it can carry memory, tenderness, self-knowledge, and even a kind of artistry. The phrase also fits Colette’s broader literary preoccupation with the intelligence of the senses and the dignity of desire, especially from a woman’s perspective. In a few words, she elevates embodied pleasure from a trivial category to a serious dimension of human life.