Molière Quotes

93 Sourced Quotes

GERONTE: But there was one little thing that puzzled me: the heart and the liver... the side they're on. I think you got them back to front. The heart is on the left side, and the liver on the right.
SGANARELLE: Yes, that used to be the case. But we've changed all that, and currently in medicine we are following the modern method.

Molière
A good husband be the best sort of plaster for to cure a young woman's ailments.

Molière
I maintain, in truth, That with a smile we should instruct our youth, Be very gentle when we have to blame, And not put them in fear of virtue's name.

Molière
Sometimes I feel something akin to rage At the corrupted morals of this age!

Molière
Wives rarely fuss about their beauty To guarantee their mate's affection.

Molière
Everything that's prose isn't verse and everything that isn't verse is prose. Now you see what it is to be a scholar!

Molière
There's a sort of decency among the dead, a remarkable discretion: you never find them making any complaint against the doctor who killed them!

Molière
One must eat to live, and not live to eat.

Molière
We had a narrow escape, Madame, While asleep; A neighboring planet did pass us close by, Cutting a swathe right through our whirlpool; Had its path led to a collision with mother earth, She would have shattered in pieces like glass.

Molière
One cannot but mistrust a prospect of felicity: one must enjoy it before one can believe in it.

Molière
The most effective way of attacking vice is to expose it to public ridicule. People can put up with rebukes but they cannot bear being laughed at: they are prepared to be wicked but they dislike appearing ridiculous.

Molière
In clothes as well as speech, the man of sense Will shun all these extremes that give offense, Dress unaffectedly, and, without haste, Follow the changes in the current taste.

Molière
No reason makes it right To shun accepted ways from stubborn spite; And we may better join the foolish crowd Than cling to wisdom, lonely though unbowed.

Molière
There's nothing people can't contrive to praise or condemn and find justification for doing so, according to their age and their inclinations.

Molière
You never see the old austerity That was the essence of civility; Young people hereabouts, unbridled, now Just want.

Molière
I shouldn't be surprised if the greatest rule of all weren't to give pleasure.

Molière
Repartee is precisely the touchstone of the man of wit.

Molière
If everyone were clothed with integrity,
If every heart were just, frank, kindly,
The other virtues would be well-nigh useless,
Since their chief purpose is to make us bear with patience
The injustice of our fellows.

Molière
A knowledgeable fool is a greater fool than an ignorant fool.

Molière
To inspire love is a woman's greatest ambition, believe me. It's the one thing woman care about and there's no woman so proud that she does not rejoice at heart in her conquests.

Molière
I saw him, I say, saw him with my own eyes.

Molière
Gold is the key, whatever else we try; and that sweet metal aids the conqueror in every case, in love as well as war.

Molière
Those whose conduct gives room for talk
Are always the first to attack their neighbors.

Molière
I might, by chance, write something just as shoddy; But then I wouldn't show it to everybody.

Molière
The true Amphitryon is the Amphitryon who gives dinners.

Molière
A learned fool is more foolish than an ignorant one.

Molière
The only people who can be excused for letting a bad book loose on the world are the poor devils who have to write for a living.

Molière
To pull the chestnuts out of the fire with the cat's paw.

Molière
Don't appear so scholarly, pray. Humanize your talk, and speak to be understood.

Molière
Although I am a pious man, I am not the less a man.

Molière