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C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.

Molière

  • Gold gives to the ugliest thing a certain charming air,
  • For that without it were else a miserable affair.
  • A husband is a plaster that cures all the ills of girlhood.

    A learned fool is more foolish than an ignorant fool.

    All is wholesome in the absence of excess.

    Birth is nothing where virtue is not.

    But it is not reason that governs love.

    Deference and intimacy live far apart.

    Grammar, which knows how to lord it over kings, and with high hand makes them obey its laws.

    Heaven forbids, it is true, certain gratifications, but there are ways and means of compounding such matters.

    I prefer an accommodating vice to an obstinate virtue.

    I shall make you an impromptu at my leisure.

    I take my property wherever I find it.

    Innocence is not accustomed to blush.

    It is not alone what we do, but also what we do not do, for which we are accountable.

    No one shall have wit save we and our friends.

    Nothing can be fairer, or more noble, than the holy fervor of true zeal.

    Perfect reason avoids all extremes.

    Repartee is precisely the touchstone of the man of wit.

    She is like ivy, which grows beautifully so long as it twines round a tree, but is of no use when separated.

    The art of flatterers is to take advantage of the foibles of the great, to foster their errors, and never to give advice which may annoy.

    The envious will die, but envy never.

    The impromptu reply is precisely the touchstone of the man of wit.

    The less we deserve good fortune, the more we hope for it.

    The more powerful the obstacle, the more glory we have in overcoming it; and the difficulties with which we are met are the maids of honor which set off virtue.

    The scandal of the world is what makes the offence; it is not sinful to sin in silence.

    The smallest errors are always the best.

    There is no protection against slander.

    There is no secret of the heart which our actions do not disclose.

    Virtue is the first title of nobility.

    We are easily fooled by that which we love.

    We ought always to conform to the manners of the greater number, and so behave as not to draw attention to ourselves. Excess either way shocks, and every man truly wise ought to attend to this in his dress as well as language, never to be affected in anything, and follow without being in too great haste the changes of fashion.

    When we are understood, we always speak well, and then all your fine diction serves no purpose.