Pierre Choderlos de Laclos

Quotes

1. Luxury, nowadays, is ruinous. We criticize, but must conform, and superfluities in the end deprive us of necessities.

2. 

   Only love can make one happy.

3. 

   One hand was needed for power, the other for love: where is the orator that could aspire to grace in such a position?

4. 

   Man enjoys the happiness he feels, woman the happiness she gives. This difference, so essential and yet so seldom noticed, has a marked difference on the whole of their respective behaviour. A man's pleasure is to satisfy desires, a woman's is chiefly to arouse them.

5. 

   With men, you say yourself, infidelity is not inconstancy.

6. 

   Either you have a rival or you don't. If you have one, you must set out to please, so as to be preferred to him. If you don't have one, you must still please so as to obviate the possibility of having one.

7. 

   The shame love causes is like its pain; we only feel it once. We may feign it afterwards, but we do not feel it. However, the pleasure remains, and that is indeed something.

8. 

   One's ridiculousness increases in proportion as one denies it.

9. 

   The scoundrel has his good qualities, and the good man his weaknesses.

10. 

    One may quote bad poetry if it is by a great poet.

11. 

    I was astonished at the pleasure to be derived from doing good.

12. 

    One has lived long enough if one has had time to win the love of women and the esteem of men.