Marie De Rabutin-Chantal Quotes
Not to find pleasure in serious reading gives a pastel coloring to the mind.
There is no real evil in life, except great pain; all the rest is imaginary, and depends on the light in which we view things
If you are not feeling well, if you have not slept, chocolate will revive you. But you have no chocolate! I think of that again and again! My dear, how will you ever manage?
We are never satisfied with having done well; and in endeavoring to do better, we do much worse.
If we could have a little patience, we should escape much mortification; time takes away as much as it gives.
When I step into this library, I cannot understand why I ever step out of it.
There are twelve hours in the day, and above fifty in the night.
I dislike clocks with second-hands; they cut up life into too small pieces.
I know of no sorrow greater than that occasioned by a delay of the post.
... we ought to be astonished at nothing; for what do we not meet with in our journey through life?
Why do we discover faults so much more readily than perfection.
It is not always sorrow that opens the fountains of the eyes.
We must always live in hope; without that consolation there would be no living.
I love you so passionately, that I hide a great part of my love, so as not to oppress you with it.
good and evil travel on the same road, but they leave different impressions.
The desire to be singular and to astonish by ways out of the common seems to me to be the source of many virtues.
Truth and tears clear the way to a deep and lasting friendship. True friendship is never serene.
. . . it seldom happens, I think, that a man has the civility to die when all the world wishes it.
Religious people spend so much time with their confessors because they like to talk about themselves.
Fortune is always on the side of the largest battalions.
We like so much to hear people talk of us and of our motives, that we are charmed even when they abuse us.
It is sometimes best to slip over thoughts and not go to the bottom of them.
I fear nothing so much as a man who is witty all day long.
Were it not for the amusement of our books, we should be moped to death for want of occupation. It rains incessantly. ... we tickle ourselves in order to laugh; to so low an ebb are we reduced.
Thicken your religion a little. It is evaporating altogether by being subtilized.
. . . long journeys are strange things: if we were always to continue in the same mind we are in at the end of a journey, we should never stir from the place we were then in . . .
matrimony is a very dangerous disorder; I had rather drink.
there are some people who never acknowledge themselves in the wrong; God help them!
In all nations truth is the most sublime, the most simple, the most difficult, and yet the most natural thing.
Friendships take work. Use disagreements as opportunity to come out better on the other side
There is nothing so lovely as to be beautiful. Beauty is a gift of God and we should cherish it as such.
When we reckon without Providence, we must frequently reckon twice.
I do not like to employ secretaries that have more wit than myself. I am afraid to make them write all my nonsense.
There is no one who does not represent a danger to someone.
We are so fond of hearing ourselves spoken of, that, be it good or ill, it is still pleasing.
It is thus that we walk through the world like the blind, not knowing whither we are going, regarding as bad what is good, regarding as good what is bad, and ever in entire ignorance.