Pierre Corneille Quotes

#1. Desire increases when fulfillment is postponed.

Pierre Corneille

#2. When the patient loves his disease, how unwilling he is to allow a remedy to be applied.

Pierre Corneille

#3. Ambition, having reached the summit, longs to descend.

Pierre Corneille

#4. A first impulse was never a crime.

Pierre Corneille

#5. Whoever can do as he pleases, commands when he entreats.

Pierre Corneille

#6. It is the gift of heaven and not of reason.

Pierre Corneille

#7. Rome is no longer in Rome, it is here where I am.

Pierre Corneille

#8. It is hard to hate what one has loved, and a half-extinguished fire is soon relit.

Pierre Corneille

#9. To take revenge halfheartedly is to court disaster; either condemn or crown your hatred.

Pierre Corneille

#10. I don't know how to defend myself: surprised innocence cannot imagine being under suspicion.

Pierre Corneille

#11. It is an imprudence common to kings to listen to too much advice and to err in their choice.

Pierre Corneille

#12. To myself alone do I owe my fame.

Pierre Corneille

#13. These flattering mirrors reflect imperfectly what is within; the countenance is often a gay deceiver. What defects of mind lie hidden under its beauty! What fair exteriors conceal base souls!

Pierre Corneille

#14. He who has resolved to conquer or die is seldom conquered; such noble despair perishes with difficulty.

Pierre Corneille

#15. He should be envied Who when his strength is spent lays down his life. Old age reserves a melancholy fate For noble souls before their life is done.

Pierre Corneille

#16. My sweetest hope is to lose hope.

Pierre Corneille

#17. To die for one's country is such a worthy fate that all compete for so beautiful a death.

Pierre Corneille

#18. I would tell you I love you, Sir, if I knew what it was to love.

Pierre Corneille

#19. As for our gods, we have a few too many to be true.

Pierre Corneille

#20. Sir, what does it matter whom I serve, so long as I am right?

Pierre Corneille

#21. A monarch must sometimes rule even himself: he who wants everything must risk very little.

Pierre Corneille

#22. When there is no peril in the fight there is no glory in the triumph.

Pierre Corneille

#23. My reason, it's true, controls my feelings, but whatever its authority, it doesn't rule them so much as tyrannize them.

Pierre Corneille

#24. Those who easily forgive invite offenses.

Pierre Corneille

#25. The subject of a good tragedy must not be realistic.

Pierre Corneille

#26. Liberty may be of no more use Than stirring up the flame of civil wars; Then, by disorder fatal to the world, One wants no king, the other wants no equal.

Pierre Corneille

#27. Love lives on hope, and dies when hope is dead;
It is a flame which sinks for lack of fuel.

Pierre Corneille

#28. Love is a tyrant sparing none.

Pierre Corneille

#29. Violence is just, where kindness is vain.

Pierre Corneille

#30. What destroys one man preserves another.

Pierre Corneille

#31. It takes good memory to keep up a lie.

Pierre Corneille

#32. Obedience is a hard profession.

Pierre Corneille

#33. I believe everything to be just when a king ordains it.

Pierre Corneille

#34. All great virtues become great men.

Pierre Corneille

#35. It is the guilt, not the scaffold, which constitutes the shame.

Pierre Corneille

#36. A liar is full of oaths.

Pierre Corneille

#37. He who allows himself to be insulted deserves to be.

Pierre Corneille

#38. The greater the effort,
the greater the glory.

Pierre Corneille

#39. A good memory is needed once we have lied.
[Fr., Il faut bonne memoire apres qu'on a menti.]

Pierre Corneille

#40. If you betray me, can I take a better revenge than to love the person you hate?

Pierre Corneille

#41. Brave men are brave from the very first.

Pierre Corneille

#42. Ah, though a Roman, I am not less a man.

Pierre Corneille

#43. It is the crime not the scaffold which is the disgrace.

Pierre Corneille

#44. To win without risk is to triumph without glory.

Pierre Corneille

#45. Here honor binds me, and I wish to satisfy it.

Pierre Corneille

#46. Your arm is unvanquished, but not invincible.

Pierre Corneille

#47. Flee an enemy who knows your weakness.

Pierre Corneille

#48. Guess, if you can, and choose, if you dare.

Pierre Corneille

#49. Every brave man is a man of his word; to such base vices he cannot stoop, and shuns more than death the shame of lying.

Pierre Corneille

#50. One often calms one's grief by recounting it.

Pierre Corneille

#51. How sweet to die after one's enemies.

Pierre Corneille

#52. True, I am young, but for souls nobly born valor doesn't await the passing of years.

Pierre Corneille

#53. Oh rage! Oh despair! Oh age, my enemy!

Pierre Corneille

#54. Time is a great manager: it arranges things well.

Pierre Corneille

#55. I love you much less than my God, but much more than myself.

Pierre Corneille

#56. Your heart is mine; there I reign. I am content.

Pierre Corneille

#57. We read that we ought to forgive our enemies; but we do not read that we ought to forgive our friends.

Pierre Corneille

#58. Ambition becomes displeasing when it is once satiated; there is a reaction; and as our spirit, till our last sigh, is always aiming toward some object, it falls back on itself, having nothing else on which to rest; and having reached the summit, it longs to descend.

Pierre Corneille

#59. A good memory is needed after one has lied.

Pierre Corneille

#60. The fire which seems extinguished often slumbers beneath the ashes.

Pierre Corneille

#61. How delicious is pleasure after torment!

Pierre Corneille

#62. In recounting our woes, we often soothe them.

Pierre Corneille

#63. Those who resolve to conquer or die, are rarely conquered.

Pierre Corneille

#64. Oh, how sweet it is to pity the fate of an enemy who can no longer threaten us!

Pierre Corneille

#65. If anyone wants to know what elephants are like, they are like people only more so.

Pierre Corneille

#66. Who is all-powerful should fear everything.

Pierre Corneille

#67. I am Roman, alas, because Horace is Roman.

Pierre Corneille

#68. As our self-interests differ, so do our feelings.

Pierre Corneille

#69. The universe has no prince or king that it [Rome] would consider equal to its humblest citizen.

Pierre Corneille

#70. Your Christians, whom one persecutes in vain, have something in them that surpasses the human. They lead a life of such innocence,that the heavens owe them some recognition: that they arise the stronger the more they are beaten down is hardly the result of common virtues.

Pierre Corneille

#71. There are secret ties, there are sympathies, by the sweet relationship of which souls that are well matched attach themselves to each other, and are affected by I know not what, which cannot be explained

Pierre Corneille

#72. Reason and love are sworn enemies.

Pierre Corneille

#73. It is only blood that can wash away such an outrage; die or kill.

Pierre Corneille

#74. A Victory without danger is a triumph without glory.

Pierre Corneille

#75. Just vengeance does not call for punishment.

Pierre Corneille

#76. In the service of Caesar, everything is legitimate.

Pierre Corneille

#77. To vanquish without peril is to triumph without glory.

Pierre Corneille

#78. He who allows me to rule is in fact my master.

Pierre Corneille

#79. Clemency is the noblest trait which can reveal a true monarch to the world.

Pierre Corneille

#80. Heaven often regulates effects by their causes, and pays the wicked what they have deserved.

Pierre Corneille

#81. The man who pardons easily courts injury.

Pierre Corneille

#82. He who does not fear death cares naught for threats.

Pierre Corneille

#83. Do your duty and leave the rest to heaven.

Pierre Corneille

#84. Omnipotence is bought with ceaseless fear.

Pierre Corneille

#85. The crime and not the scaffold makes the shame.

Pierre Corneille

#86. Each instant of life is a step toward death.

Pierre Corneille

#87. Guess if you can, choose if you dare.

Pierre Corneille

#88. He who can live in infamy is unworthy of life.

Pierre Corneille

#89. I agree to, or rather aspire to, my doom.

Pierre Corneille

#90. I can be forced to live without happiness, but I will never consent to live without honor.

Pierre Corneille

#91. Let us attend to the present, and as to the future we shall know how to manage when the occasion arrives.

Pierre Corneille

#92. I am young, it is true; but in noble souls valor does not wait for years.

Pierre Corneille

#93. I am master of myself as of the universe, so I am; so I wish to be.

Pierre Corneille

#94. Ambition aspires to descend.

Pierre Corneille

#95. A liar is always lavish of oaths.

Pierre Corneille

#96. We never taste happiness in perfection, our most fortunate successes are mixed with sadness.

Pierre Corneille

#97. Be it only for a day, it is still a glory without equal to be master of the world just that day.

Pierre Corneille

#98. Ambition displeases when it has been sated ... having reached the peak, it aspires to descend.

Pierre Corneille

#99. Severity is allowable where gentleness has no effect.

Pierre Corneille

#100. I would not like a king who could obey.

Pierre Corneille