Top 43 Pierre-Ambroise Choderlos De Laclos Quotes
#2. 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.
Pierre-Ambroise Choderlos De Laclos
#5. It was there, in particular, that I confirmed the truth that love, which we cry up as the source of our pleasures, is nothing more than an excuse for them.
Pierre-Ambroise Choderlos De Laclos
#7. Yet I cannot believe that this talisman of love has lost all its power and I still attempt to use it.
- Those who have never had occasion to feel sometimes the value of a word, of an expression, consecrated by love will find no sense in this phrase. (C. de L.)
Pierre-Ambroise Choderlos De Laclos
#8. 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.
Pierre-Ambroise Choderlos De Laclos
#13. Love, hatred, you have only to choose; they all sleep under the same roof; you can double your existence, caress with one hand and strike with the other.
Pierre-Ambroise Choderlos De Laclos
#19. Agonized by her longing to go on thinking of her lover, and her fear of damnation if she does, she has hit on the idea of praying God to make her forget him and as she keeps on making this prayer every minute of the day, she's found a way of never letting him out of her mind.
Pierre-Ambroise Choderlos De Laclos
#20. I perceive your lovers purely as the successors of Alexander the Great, incompetent joint rulers of an empire where I once ruled supreme.
Pierre-Ambroise Choderlos De Laclos
#22. 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.
Pierre-Ambroise Choderlos De Laclos
#23. 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.
Pierre-Ambroise Choderlos De Laclos
#25. If, for example, I had just as much love as you had virtue (and that is surely saying a lot) it is not astonishing that one should end at the same time as the other. It is not my fault.
Pierre-Ambroise Choderlos De Laclos
#31. You know better than I, Monsieur,' said he, 'that to lie with a girl is only to make her do what pleases her; there is often a great distance between that and making her do what we want.
Pierre-Ambroise Choderlos De Laclos
#32. 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?
Pierre-Ambroise Choderlos De Laclos
#33. They have neither thought nor being, and merely repeat indifferently and uncomprehendingly everything they hear, retaining within themselves an absolute void.
Pierre-Ambroise Choderlos De Laclos
#34. 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.
Pierre-Ambroise Choderlos De Laclos
#35. Moreover it is easier, in the informality of conversation, to achieve that excitement and incoherence which is the true eloquence of love.
Pierre-Ambroise Choderlos De Laclos
#39. Indeed, if to be in love is not to be able to live without possessing that person one desires, to sacrifice to her one's time, one's pleasures, one's life, then I am really in love.
Pierre-Ambroise Choderlos De Laclos
#40. Who can wish for happiness that is bought at the price of reason, whose fleeting pleasures are at least followed by regret, if not remorse?
Pierre-Ambroise Choderlos De Laclos
#42. Truth to tell, the longer I live, the more I'm tempted to think that the only moderately worthwhile people in the world are you and I.
Pierre-Ambroise Choderlos De Laclos
