Top 100 Racine's Quotes
#1. Felicity is in possession, happiness in anticipation.
Jean Racine
#2. My death, taking the light from my eyes, gives back to the day the purity which they soiled.
Jean Racine
#3. Beckett despite his professed preference for Racine, is master and victim, and as such pervades Beckett's canonical drama, Endgame. Beckett's Hamlet follows the French model, in which excessive consciousness negates action, which is at some distance from Shakespeare's Hamlet.
Harold Bloom
#4. Les te moins sont fort chers, et n'en a pas qui veut. Witnesses are expensive and not everyone can afford them.
Jean Racine
#5. The face of tyranny Is always mild at first.
Jean Racine
#6. I felt for my crime a just terror; I looked on my life with hate, and my passion with horror.
Jean Racine
#8. A noble heart cannot suspect in others the pettiness and malice that it has never felt.
Jean Racine
#9. Love is not dumb. The heart speaks many ways.
Jean Racine
#10. It is commonly the personal character of a writer which gives him his public significance. It is not imparted by his genius. Napoleon said of Corneille, "Were he living I would make him a king;" but he did not read him. He read Racine, yet he said nothing of the kind of Racine.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#11. It is a maxim of old that among themselves all things are common to friends.
Jean Racine
#12. He who laughs on Friday will weep on Sunday.
Jean Racine
#13. To save our imperiled honor everything must be sacrificed, even virtue.
Jean Racine
#14. I have pushed virtue to outright brutality.
Jean Racine
#16. Wrinkles on the brow are the imprints of exploits.
Jean Racine
#17. The day is not purer than the depths of my heart.
Jean Racine
#18. Honor, without money, is a mere malady.
Jean Racine
#19. There may be guilt when there is too much virtue.
Jean Racine
#20. Sun, I come to see you for the last time.
Jean Racine
#21. Vice, like virtue, Grows in small steps, and no true innocence Can ever fall at once to deepest guilt.
Jean Racine
#23. [Corneille] was inspired by Roman authors and Roman spirit, Racine with delicacy by the polished court of Louis XIV.
Horace Walpole
#24. Without money honor is merely a disease.
Jean Racine
#25. Sir, that much prudence calls for too much worry; I cannot foresee misfortunes so far away.
Jean Racine
#26. There are no secrets that time does not reveal.
Jean Racine
#27. Thank the Gods! My misery exceeds all my hopes!
Jean Racine
#28. All is asleep: the army, the wind, and Neptune.
Jean Racine
#29. He who has far to ride spares his horse.
Jean Racine
#30. Life is a comedy to those who think, a tragedy to those who feel.
Jean Racine
#31. To repair the irreparable ravages of time.
Jean Racine
#32. Is a faith without action a sincere faith?
Jean Racine
#33. It behooves a prudent person to make trial of everything before arms.
Jean Racine
#34. The quarrels of lovers are the renewal of love.
Jean Racine
#35. By dying I wanted to maintain my honor, and hide a flame so black from the daylight!
Jean Racine
#36. But Racine's extraordinary powers as a writer become still more obvious when we consider that besides being a great poet he is also a great psychologist.
Lytton Strachey
#37. The crime of a mother is a heavy burden.
Jean Racine
#38. When will the veil be lifted that casts so black a night over the universe? God of Israel, lift at last the gloom: For how long will you be hidden?
Jean Racine
#39. Shakespeare, with an improved education and in a more enlightened age, might easily have attained the purity and correction of Racine; but nothing leads one to suppose that Racine in a barbarous age would have attained the grandeur, force and nature of Shakespeare.
Horace Walpole
#40. A single word often betrays a great design.
Jean Racine
#41. A tragedy need not have blood and death; it's enough that it all be filled with that majestic sadness that is the pleasure of tragedy.
Jean Racine
#42. Do you think you can be righteous and holy with impunity?
Jean Racine
#43. I loved you when you were unfaithful; what would I have done if you were true?
Jean Racine
#44. I have everything, yet have nothing; and although I possess nothing, still of nothing am I in want.
Jean Racine
#45. What does it matter if, by chance, a little vile blood be spilled?
Jean Racine
#46. Can a faith that does nothing be called sincere?
Jean Racine
#47. He who bridles the fury of the billows knows also to put a stop to the secret plans of the wicked. Submitting with respect to His holy will, I fear God, and have no other fear.
Jean Racine
#48. I embrace my rival, but only to strangle him.
Jean Racine
#49. A benefit cited by way of reproach is equivalent to an injury.
Jean Racine
#50. Nothing is so difficult but that it may be found out by seeking.
Jean Racine
#51. According as the man is, so must you humour him.
Jean Racine
#52. Great crimes come never singly; they are linked To sins that went before.
Jean Racine
#53. Have there ever been more submissive slaves? Adoring, even in their irons, the God who punishes them.
Jean Racine
#54. It's no longer a warmth hidden in my veins: it's Venus entire and whole fastening on her prey.
Jean Racine
#55. Many a time a man cannot be such as he would be, if circumstances do not admit of it.
Jean Racine
#56. The part I remember best is the beginning.
Jean Racine
#57. He who will travel far spares his steed.
Jean Racine
#58. And forever goodbye! Forever! Oh, Sir, can you imagine how dreadful this cruel word sounds when one loves?
Jean Racine
#59. Small crimes always precedes great ones.
Jean Racine
#60. Now my innocence begins to weigh me down.
Jean Racine
#62. Henceforth the majesty of God revere;Fear Him, and you have nothing else to fear.
Jean Racine
#63. Some smaller crimes always precede the great crimes.
Jean Racine
#64. I can hear those glances that you think are silent.
Jean Racine
#65. And do you count for nothing God who fights for us?
Jean Racine
#66. In fine, nothing is said now that has not been said before.
Jean Racine
#67. If I could believe that this was said sincerely, I could put up with anything.
Jean Racine
#68. The feeling of mistrust is always the last which a great mind acquires.
Jean Racine
#69. Me, rule? Me, place the State under my law, when my feeble reason no longer rules even myself!
Jean Racine
#70. I know the disposition of women: when you will, they won't; when you won't, they set their hearts upon you of their own inclination.
Jean Racine
#71. The principal rule of art is to please and to move. All the other rules were created to achieve this first one.
Jean Racine
#72. I will die if I lose you, but I will die if I wait longer.
Jean Racine
#73. Ah, why can't I know if I love, or if I hate?
Jean Racine
#74. Behind a veil, unseen yet present, I was the forceful soul that moved this mighty body.
Jean Racine
#75. Justice in the extreme is often unjust.
Jean Racine
#76. Hippolytus can feel, and feels nothing for me!
Jean Racine
#77. Newton, Pascal, Bossuet, Racine, F?nelon
that is to say, some of the most enlightened men on earth, in the most philosophical of all ages
have been believers in Jesus Christ; and the great Cond?, when dying, repeated these noble words, "Yes, I shall see God as He is, face to face!".
Luc De Clapiers
#78. Crime like virtue has its degrees; and timid innocence was never known to blossom suddenly into extreme license.
Jean Racine
#79. You feign guilt in order to justify yourself.
Jean Racine
#80. Happiness heldis the seed
happiness shared is the flower,
happiness seems to be shared
Jean Racine
#81. Flight is lawful, when one flies from tyrants.
Jean Racine
#82. The joys of the evil flow away like a torrent.
Jean Racine
#83. Pain is unjust, and all the arguments That cannot soothe it only rouse suspicion.
Jean Racine
#84. I cherished you inconstant; what would I have done,
faithful? Now, even now, when your cruel mouth
so calmly speaks my death sentence, I wonder,
cold wretch, I wonder still, if I do not love you.
Jean Racine
#85. She wavers, she hesitates: in a word, she is a woman.
Jean Racine
#87. The fashions we call English in Paris are French in London, and vice versa. Franco-British hostility vanishes when it comes to questions of words and clothing. God save the King is a tune composed by Lully for a chorus in a play by Racine.
Honore De Balzac
#88. People take England on trust, and repeat that Shakespeare is the greatest of all authors. I have read him: there is nothing that compares Racine or Corneille: his plays are unreadable, pitiful.
Napoleon Bonaparte
#89. Love is not a fire to be shut up in a soul. Everything betrays us: voice, silence, eyes; half-covered fires burn all the brighter.
Jean Racine
#91. The clear French landscape is as pure as a verse of Racine.
Paul Cezanne
#92. He who ruleth the raging of the sea, knows also how to check the designs of the ungodly. I submit myself with reverence to His Holy Will. O Abner, I fear my God, and I fear none but Him.
Jean Racine
#93. It is a commonplace that Racine is untranslatable. This is not because his verse is difficult, but because it is not.
Kenneth Rexroth
#94. Small crimes always precede great crimes. Whoever has been able to transgress the limits set by law may afterwards violate the most sacred rights; crime, like virtue, has its degrees, and never have we seen timid innocence pass suddenly to extreme licentiousness.
Jean Racine
#95. You who love wild passions, flee the holy austerity of my pleasures. All here breathes of God, peace and truth.
Jean Racine
#96. Do not they bring it to pass by knowing that they know nothing at all?
Jean Racine
#97. The heart that can no longer love passionately must with fury hate.
Jean Racine
#98. On the throne, one has many worries; and remorse is the one that weighs the least.
Jean Racine
#100. Hell, covering all with its gloomy vapors, has cast shadows on even the holiest eyes.
Jean Racine
