Home > Author > Pierre Choderlos de Laclos
141 " À force de chercher de bonnes raisons, on en trouve ; on les dit ; et après on y tient, non pas tant parce qu'elles sont bonnes que pour ne pas se démentir. "
― Pierre Choderlos de Laclos , Les Liaisons dangereuses
142 " What woman of honour, besides, would resolve on doing what she knows she will be obliged to conceal? "
143 " The profligate wretch has his virtues as well as the virtuous man his weaknesses. "
144 " … the charm of love resides in the qualities of the soul. "
145 " You must be careful not to vex old ladies: they're the ones who decide young women's reputations. "
146 " It's the little details that make for plausibility and plausibility makes fibs immaterial because nobody feels the need to check them. "
147 " should have been with you this morning; but my doctor will not allow me to miss a day from my bath. "
148 " Can there be a sweeter pleasure than to be at peace with oneself, to enjoy days of unbroken calm, to fall asleep without anxiety and to wake without remorse? What you call happiness is but a tumult of the senses, a tempestuous sea of passions, a fearful spectacle even when it is viewed from the shore. So how can I confront these storms? How dare I embark upon a sea covered in the debris of thousands upon thousands of shipwrecks? And with whom? "
149 " Love is an independent spirit; being cautious may help us to avoid it but can never enable us to overcome it; once it's born, it can only die of natural causes or complete hopelessness. "
150 " You'll find the pain is like the shame, you only feel it once. "
151 " the true maxim is, not give into excess, but with those one wishes to be rid of. "
152 " si on était éclairé sur son véritable bonheur, on ne le chercherait jamais hors des bornes prescrites par les Lois et la Religion. "
153 " To know you without loving you, to love you without being constant to you, are both equally impossible. "
154 " … the woman who has a will of her own is not as much in love as she professes. "
155 " Le luxe absorbe tout : on le blâme, mais il faut l'imiter ; et le superflu finit par priver du nécessaire. "
156 " Moreover, a remark I am astonished you have not made, is, that nothing is so difficult in love, as to write what one does not feel. "
157 " I feel only too keenly how difficult it is to resist an overpowering feeling "
158 " I supplemented these with the help of reading: but do not imagine it was all of the kind you suppose. I studied our manners in novels, our opinions in the philosophers; I even went to the most severe moralists to see what they expected from us; and I thus made sure of what one could do, of what one ought to think, and of how one must appear. "
159 " In that debased society love is viewed as a failing, a weakness, and something to be avoided at all costs. "
160 " So many women do not see in their present lover their future enemy "