Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Emulation is not rivalry. Emulation is the child of ambition; rivalry is the unlovable daughter of envy.
Nothing is a greater impediment to being on good terms with others than being ill at ease with yourself.
To say to a rich man: You are poor! is to tell the Archbishop of Granada that his sermons are worthless.
Nothing so fortifies a friendship as a belief on the part of one friend that he is superior to the other.
What is a child, monsieur, but the image of two beings, the fruit of two sentiments spontaneously blended?
No woman allows her lover to descend from his pedestal. Even a god is not forgiven the slightest pettiness.
Love is the reduction of the universe to the single being, and the expansion of a single being, even to God
In Paris every man must have had a love affair. What woman wants something that no other woman ever wanted.
Any man, however blase or depraved, finds his love kindled anew when he sees himself threatened by a rival.
Danger arouses interest. Where death is involved, the vilest criminal invariably stirs a little compassion.
In France we can cauterize wounds but we do not yet know any remedy for the injuries inflicted by a bon mot.
An ugly woman, married to King Henry VIII, would have defied the axe and daunted her husband's infidelities.
Many men nourish a pride which urges them to conceal their struggles and show themselves only as conquerors.
The Police and the Society of Jesus posses in common the virtue of never forsaking their enemies as friends.
L'amour n'est pas seulement un sentiment, il est un art aussi. Love is not only a feeling; it is also an art.
A woman in love has full intelligence of her power; the more virtuous she is, the more effective her coquetry.
Remorse is impotent; it will repeat its faults. Repentance only is a true force; it puts an end to everything.
Nos beaux sentiments ne sont-ils pas les poe sies de la volonte ? Aren't our best feelings poetry of the will?
My further advice on your relations to women is based upon that other motto of chivalry, "Serve all, love one."
Neither the passions not justice nor politics nor the great social forces ever consider the victims they strike.
Charity is not one of the virtues practiced on the stock market. The heart of a bank is but one of many viscera.
When a woman wants to betray her husband, her actions are almost invariably studied but they are never reasoned.
Men are such dupes by choice, that he who would impose upon others never need be at a loss to find ready victims.
In intimate family life, there comes a moment when children, willingly or no, become the judges of their parents.
Let nothing dupe you! Such is the horrible maxim that acts as a solvent upon every noble feeling man experiences.
The secret of great fortunes without apparent cause is a crime forgotten, forgotten because it was properly done.
A naked woman is less dangerous than one who spreads her skirt skillfully to cover and exhibit everything at once.
Materialism and spirituality are two pretty racquets with which charlatans in cap and gown make the same ball fly.
Many people claim coffee inspires them, but, as everybody knows, coffee only makes boring people even more boring.
Political liberty, the peace of a nation, and science itself are gifts for which Fate demands a heavy tax in blood!
How natural it is to destroy what we cannot possess, to deny what we do not understand, and to insult what we envy!
You're a fine fastidious young man, as proud as a lion, as gentle as a girl. You'd make a good catch for the devil.
Thought is the only treasure that God sets outside all power and keeps to serve as a secret link among the unhappy.
People exaggerate both happiness and unhappiness; we are never so fortunate nor so unfortunate as people say we are.
Rich women need not fear old age; their gold can always create about them any feelings necessary to their happiness.
Does anyone know where these gondolas of Paris come from? [Fr., Ne sait on pas ou viennent ces gondoles Parisiennes?]
There are two histories : official history, lying, and then secret history, where you find the real causes of events.
A great love is a credit opened in favor of a power so consuming that the moment of bankruptcy must inevitably occur.
What makes friendship indissolute and what doubles its charms is a feeling we find lacking in love: I mean certitude.
In love, what a woman mistakes for disgust is actually clearsightedness. If she does not admire a man, she scorns him.
Hatred is the vice of narrow souls; they feed it with all their littleness, and make it the pretext of base tyrannies.
Ideas devour the ages as men are devoured by their passions. When man is cured, human nature will cure itself perhaps.
A grocer is attracted to his business by a magnetic force as great as the repulsion which renders it odious to artists.
Thanks to the toleration preached by the encyclopedists of the eighteenth century, the sorcerer is exempt from torture.
Noble passions are like vices: the more they are satisfied, the greater they grow, Mothers and gamblers are insatiable.
Whereas scoundrels become reconciled after knifing one another, lovers break up irrevocably over a mere glance or word.
Nowhere but in France are people so strictly observant of great matters and so disdainfully indulgent about small ones.
To kill a relative of whom you are tired is something. But to inherit his property afterwards, that is genuine pleasure.
Small natures require despotism to exercise their sinews, as great souls thirst for equality to give play to their heart.
The art of motherhood involves much silent, unobtrusive self-denial, an hourly devotion which finds no detail too minute.