Best 31 quotes of Pierre Choderlos De Laclos on MyQuotes

Pierre Choderlos De Laclos

  • By Anonym
    Pierre Choderlos De Laclos

    Cast between the extremes of happiness and misfortune, uncertainty is a cruel torment.

  • By Anonym
    Pierre Choderlos De Laclos

    Either you have a rival or you don't. If you have one, you must please in order to be preferred to him, and if you don't you must still please-in order to avoid having one.

  • By Anonym
    Pierre Choderlos De Laclos

    Humanity is not perfect in any fashion; no more in the case of evil than in that of good. The criminal has his virtues, just as the honest man has his weaknesses.

  • By Anonym
    Pierre Choderlos De Laclos

    I am astonished at the pleasure one experiences in doing good; and I should be tempted to believe that what we call virtuous people have not so much merit as they lead us to suppose.

  • By Anonym
    Pierre Choderlos De Laclos

    I assure you that the world is not so amusing as we imagined.

  • By Anonym
    Pierre Choderlos De Laclos

    I can see that you're in love, but only in a very narrow sense. It's the love of someone that finds charms and qualities in a woman that she doesn't actually have, who puts her in a class apart with every one else in second place, and who stays attached to her even while he's abusing her.

  • By Anonym
    Pierre Choderlos De Laclos

    I shall possess this woman; I shall steal her from the husband who profanes her: I will even dare ravish her from the God whom she adores. What delight, to be in turns the object and the victor of her remorse! Far be it from me to destroy the prejudices which sway her mind! They will add to my happiness and my triumph. Let her believe in virtue, and sacrifice it to me; let the idea of falling terrify her, without preventing her fall; and may she, shaken by a thousand terrors, forget them, vanquish them only in my arms.

  • By Anonym
    Pierre Choderlos De Laclos

    It has become necessary for me to have this woman, so as to save myself from the ridicule of being in love with her: for to what lengths will a man not be driven by thwarted desire?

  • By Anonym
    Pierre Choderlos De Laclos

    I willingly allow that money does not guarantee happiness; but it must also be allowed that it makes happiness a great deal easier to achieve.

  • By Anonym
    Pierre Choderlos De Laclos

    One must not permit oneself excesses, except with persons whom one wishes soon to leave.

  • By Anonym
    Pierre Choderlos De Laclos

    Revenge is a dish that is best served cold.

  • By Anonym
    Pierre Choderlos De Laclos

    When one woman strikes at the heart of another, she seldom misses, and the wound is invariably fatal.

  • By Anonym
    Pierre Choderlos De Laclos

    You may conquer her love of God: you will never overcome her fear of the devil.

  • By Anonym
    Pierre Choderlos De Laclos

    A man enjoys the pleasure he feels, a woman the pleasure she bestows.

  • By Anonym
    Pierre Choderlos De Laclos

    Believe me, Vicomte, when a woman has become so encrusted with prejudice, she is best left to her fate. She will never be anything better than a nobody.

  • By Anonym
    Pierre Choderlos De Laclos

    Contrary to conventional wisdom, opportunity always knocks more than once whereas a false step can never be retraced.

  • By Anonym
    Pierre Choderlos De Laclos

    Dès ce moment, le doux espoir a remplacé la cruelle inquiétude. J'aurai cette femme, je l'enlèverai au mari qui la profane, j'oserai la ravir au Dieu même qu'elle adore.

  • By Anonym
    Pierre Choderlos De Laclos

    Didn’t you know that it’s not until after enjoying its delights that Love can stop being blind.

  • By Anonym
    Pierre Choderlos De Laclos

    Frightened of the peril she is courting, she would like to stop but cannot hold back. Care and skill can shorten the steps she takes: nothing can prevent them succeeding each other. Sometimes, unable to face the danger, she closes her eyes and lets herself go, putting her fate in my hands. More often some new fear rouses her to new efforts. In her mortal terror she tries once more to retreat, and exhausts her strength in regaining a little ground; but soon some magic power transplants her yet nearer the danger she has vainly attempted to fly.

  • By Anonym
    Pierre Choderlos De Laclos

    He'd call me false and faithless and I've always had a weakness for those two words; next to cruel, they're the nicest words for a woman to hear, and not so hard to earn.

  • By Anonym
    Pierre Choderlos De Laclos

    Love, hatred, you have only to choose: it is all there with you under the same roof. You can enjoy life, caressing with one hand and killing with the other.

  • By Anonym
    Pierre Choderlos De Laclos

    Mais moi, qu'ai-je de commun avec ces femmes inconsidérées ? Quand m'avez-vous vue m'écarter des règles que je me suis prescrites, et manquer à mes principes ? Je dis mes principes, et je le dis à dessein : car ils ne sont pas, comme ceux des autres femmes, donnés au hasard, reçus sans examen et suivis par habitude ; ils sont le fruit de mes profondes réflexions ; je les ai crées, et je puis dire que je suis mon ouvrage.

  • By Anonym
    Pierre Choderlos De Laclos

    Now, I'm not going to deny that I was aware of your beauty. But the point is, this has nothing to do with your beauty. As I got to know you, I began to realise that beauty was the least of your qualities. I became fascinated by your goodness. I was drawn in by it. I didn't understand what was happening to me. And it was only when I began to feel actual, physical pain every time you left the room that it finally dawned on me: I was in love, for the first time in my life. I knew it was hopeless, but that didn't matter to me. And it's not that I want to have you. All I want is to deserve you. Tell me what to do. Show me how to behave. I'll do anything you say.

  • By Anonym
    Pierre Choderlos De Laclos

    Oh, keep your warnings and your fears for those giddy women who call themselves women of feeling, whose heated imaginations persuade them that nature has placed their senses in their heads; who, having never thought about it, invariably confuse love with a lover; who, with their stupid delusions, imagine that the man with whom they have found pleasure is pleasure's only source; and, like all the superstitious, accord that faith and respect to the priest which is due to only the divinity.

  • By Anonym
    Pierre Choderlos De Laclos

    One gets bored of everything, my Angel, it’s a law of nature; it’s not my fault.

  • By Anonym
    Pierre Choderlos De Laclos

    [Prévan] accordingly sought out these paragons of perfection. He was readily received into their society, and he took this for a favourable omen. He knew well enough that happy people are not so easy of access.

  • By Anonym
    Pierre Choderlos De Laclos

    There is no longer any happiness for me, no longer any peace but in the possession of this woman whom I love and hate with equal fury. I cannot tolerate my life until hers is again mine to dispose of. Then, contented and calm, I shall see her in turn buffeted by the storms that assail me now, and I shall stir up a thousand others too. I want hope and fear, faith and suspicion, all the evils devised by hate and all the blessings conferred by love, to fill her heart and to succeed one another there at my will.

  • By Anonym
    Pierre Choderlos De Laclos

    Valmont is quite another matter: difficult to keep, and dangerous to leave. He demands great skill, or, if you have none, great tractability.

  • By Anonym
    Pierre Choderlos De Laclos

    What I blame myself for most, and what, nevertheless, I must tell you about, is that I am afraid I did not defend myself as well as I was able. I don't know how that happened. I most certainly am not in love with Monsieur de Valmont, quite the contrary: yet there were moments when it was as if I were.

  • By Anonym
    Pierre Choderlos De Laclos

    Will you, then, never grow weary of being unjust?

  • By Anonym
    Pierre Choderlos De Laclos

    You accuse her of being ill-dressed. I agree. Clothes don't become her. Everything that hides her, disfigures. It is in the freedom of dishabille that she is truly ravishing.