Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Don't appear so scholarly, pray. Humanize your talk, and speak to be understood.
A good husband be the best sort of plaster for to cure a young woman's ailments.
Debts are nowadays like children begot with pleasure, but brought forth in pain.
My heavens! I've been talking prose for the last forty years without knowing it.
Words and deeds are far from being one. Much that is talked about is left undone.
[Dom Juan] believes neither in Heaven, nor the saints, nor God, nor the Werewolf.
We should look long and carefully at ourselves before we pass judgement on others.
People are all alike in their promises. It is only in their deeds that they differ.
Of all follies there is none greater than wanting to make the world a better place.
Frenchmen have an unlimited capacity for gallantry and indulge it on every occasion.
I would like to be like my father and all the rest of my ancestors who never married.
Good Heavens! For more than forty years I have been speaking prose without knowing it.
Those whose conduct gives room for talk are always the first to attack their neighbors.
The scandal of the world is what makes the offence; it is not sinful to sin in silence.
True, Heaven prohibits certain pleasures; but one can generally negotiate a compromise.
Great is the fortune of he who possesses a good bottle, a good book, and a good friend.
Folk whose own behavior is most ridiculous are always to the fore in slandering others.
Innocence is not accustomed to blush. [Fr., L'innocence a rougir n'est point accoutumee.]
Malicious tongues spread their poison abroad and nothing here below is proof against them.
Esteem must be founded on preference: to hold everyone in high esteem is to esteem nothing.
How strange it is to see with how much passion People see things only in their own fashion!
It is not only for what we do that we are held responsible, but also for what we do not do.
The envious will die, but envy never. [Fr., Les envieux mourront, mais non jamais l'envie.]
Cultivated people should be superior to any consideration so sordid as a mercenary interest.
...all the failures of the great leaders have arisen merely from a lack of skill in dancing.
People can be induced to swallow anything, provided it is sufficiently seasoned with praise.
Grammar, which knows how to lord it over kings, and with high hands makes them obey its laws.
I might, by chance, write something just as shoddy; But then I wouldn't show it to everybody.
The public scandal is what constitutes the offence: sins sinned in secret are no sins at all.
Reasoning is the pastime of my whole household, and all this reasoning has driven out Reason.
According to the saying of an ancient philosopher, one should eat to live, and not live to eat
Tobacco is the passion of honest men and he who lives without tobacco is not worthy of living.
Ah! how annoying that the law doesn't allow a woman to change husbands just as one does shirts.
When we are understood, we always speak well, and then all your fine diction serves no purpose.
One cannot but mistrust a prospect of felicity: one must enjoy it before one can believe in it.
Age brings about everything; but it is not the time, Madam, as we know, to be a prude at twenty.
He who follows his lessons tastes a profound peace, and looks upon everybody as a bunch of manure.
New-born desires, after all, have inexplicable charms, and all the pleasure of love is in variety.
No matter what everybody says, ultimately these things can harm us only by the way we react to them.
As the purpose of comedy is to correct the vices of men, I see no reason why anyone should be exempt.
The smallest errors are always the best. [Fr., Les plus courtes erreurs sont toujours les meilleures.]
All right-minded people adore it; and anyone who is able to live without it is unworthy to draw breathe
Gold gives to the ugliest thing a certain charming air, For that without it were else a miserable affair.
They [zealots] would have everybody be as blind as themselves: to them, to be clear-sighted is libertinism.
And with his arms crossed he looks pityingly down from his spiritual height on everything that anyone says.
I find medicine is the best of all trades because whether you do any good or not you still. Get your money.
I want to be distinguished from the rest; to tell the truth, a friend to all mankind is not a friend for me.
Heaven forbids, it is true, certain gratifications, but there are ways and means of compounding such matters.
Writing is like prostitution. First you do it for love, and then for a few close friends, and then for money.
The more we love our friends, the less we flatter them; it is by excusing nothing that pure love shows itself.