Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux Quotes

25 Sourced Quotes

If your descent is from heroic sires,
Show in your life a remnant of their fires.

Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux
The wisest man is he who does not fancy that he is so at all.

Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux
Honor is like an island, rugged and without a beach; once we have left it, we can never return.

Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux
Every age has its pleasures, its style of wit, and its own ways.

Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux
Let a single completed action, all in one place, all in one day, keep the theatre packed to the end of your play.

Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux
Time flies and draws us with it. The moment in which I am speaking is already far from me.

Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux
Of all the creatures that creep, swim, or fly,
Peopling the earth, the waters, and the sky,
From Rome to Iceland, Paris to Japan,
I really think the greatest fool is man.

Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux
A fool always finds one still more foolish to admire him.

Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux
Nothing but truth is lovely, nothing fair.

Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux
Let him now speak, or else hereafter for ever hold his peace.

Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux
Often the fear of one evil leads us into a worse.

Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux
Now two punctilious envoys, Thine and Mine, Embroil the earth about a fancied line; And, dwelling much on right and much on wrong, Prove how the right is chiefly with the strong.

Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux
Happy the poet who with ease can steer
From grave to gay, from lively to severe.

Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux
Whatever is well conceived is clearly said,
And the words to say it flow with ease.

Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux
The terrible burden of having nothing to do.

Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux
At last comes Malherbe and, the first to do so in France, brings to his verse a smooth cadence.

Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux
Virtue alone is the unerring sign of a noble soul.

Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux
But satire, ever moral, ever new,
Delights the reader and instructs him, too.
She, if good sense refine her sterling page,
Oft shakes some rooted folly of the age.

Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux
In spite of every sage whom Greece can show, Unerring wisdom never dwelt below; Folly in all of every age we see, The only difference lies in the degree.

Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux
At times truth may not seem probable.

Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux
At last came Malherbe, and he was the first in France to give poetry a proper flow.

Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux
Hasten slowly, and without losing heart,
Put your work twenty times upon the anvil.

Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux
To support those of your rights authorized by Heaven, destroy everything rather than yield; that is the spirit of the Church.

Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux
He [Molière] pleases all the world, but cannot please himself.

Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux
I can call nothing by name if that is not his name. I call a cat a cat, and Rollet a rogue.

Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux