Ninon de L'Enclos
When our desires are fulfilled, we never fail to realize the wealth of imagination and the paucity of reality.Collection: Reality
The more sins you confess, the more books you will sell.Collection: Book
Never tell a loved one of an infidelity: you would be badly rewarded for your troubles. Although one dislikes being deceived, one likes even less to be undeceived.Collection: Infidelity
A man is given the choice between loving women and understanding themCollection: Men
There are no perfect women in the world; only hypocrites exhibit no defects.Collection: Hypocrite
A cunning woman is her own mistress because she confides in no one. She who deceives others anticipates deceit, and guards herself.Collection: Mistress
Love never dies of starvation, but often of indigestion.Collection: Love
Love without desire is a delusion: it does not exist in nature.Collection: Desire
A woman is more influenced by what she divines than by what she is told.Collection: Influence
A woman should not take a lover without the consent of her heart, nor a husband without the consent of her reason.Collection: Husband
Glances are the first billets-doux of love.Collection: Firsts
The resistance of a woman is not always a proof of her virtue, but more frequently of her experience.Collection: Resistance
I have always sworn to my lovers to love them eternally, but for me eternity is a quarter of an hour.Collection: Infidelity
It is not enough to be wise, one must be engaging.Collection: Wise
If a man needs a religion to conduct himself properly in this world, it is a sign that he has either a limited mind or a corrupt heart.Collection: Heart
Novelty is the storehouse of pleasure.Collection: Novelty
Today a new sun rises for me; everything lives, everything is animated, everything seems to speak to me of my passion, everything invites me to cherish it.Collection: Life
It requires infinitely a greater genius to make love, than to make war.Collection: War
Men lose more conquests by their own awkwardness than by any virtue in the woman.Collection: Men
After the age of eighty, all contemporaries are friends.Collection: Age
Who has not raised a tombstone, here and there, over buried hopes and dead joys, on the road of life? Like the scars of the heart, they are not to be obliterated.Collection: Tombstone
Actors ought to be larger than life. You come across quite enough ordinary, nondescript people in daily life and I don't see why you should be subjected to them on the stage too.Collection: People
Gossip, like ennui, is born of idleness.Collection: Gossip
The loss of friends is a tax on age!Collection: Friends
Fair is not fair, but that which pleaseth.Collection: Attractiveness
Wit is a dangerous talent in friendship.Collection: Talent
There is a certain time of life, when we value a good stomach more than the mind.Collection: Mind
Equality is the share of every one at their advent upon earth, and equality is also theirs when placed beneath it.Collection: Equality
Oaths are the counterfeit money with which we pay the sacrifice of love.Collection: Sacrifice
We should lay in a store of food, but never of pleasures; these should be gathered day by day.Collection: Pleasure
Memory is ever active, ever true. Alas, if it were only as easy to forget!Collection: Memories
Old age is women's hell.Collection: Age
It is strange that modesty is the rule for women when what they most value in men is boldness.Collection: Men
Feminine virtue is nothing but a convenient masculine invention.Collection: Virtue
One must choose between loving women and knowing them.Collection: Knowing
Shall I tell you what makes love so dangerous? 'Tis the too high idea we are apt to form of it.Collection: Ideas
There are other things besides beauty with which to captivate the hearts of men. The Italians have a saying: "Fair is not fair, but that which pleaseth.Collection: Heart
The mind has great advantages over the body; however the body often furnishes little treats ... which offer the mind relief from sad thoughts.Collection: Mind
Ennui, the parent of expensive and ruinous vices.Collection: Parent
Hatred is nearly always honest--rarely, if ever, assumed. So much cannot be said for love.Collection: Hatred
Inconstancy is the child of satiety.Collection: Children
Words really flattering are not those which we prepare but those which escape us unthinkingly.Collection: Flattering
Gentleness! more powerful than Hercules.Collection: Powerful
I hold those wise who know how to be happy.Collection: Wise
It takes a hundred times more skill to make love than to command an army.Collection: Army
What is death, after all? We leave only mortals behind us.Collection: Death
The passions do not die out; they burn out.Collection: Passion
Indiscretion and wickedness, be it known, are first cousins.Collection: Cousin
The secret known to two is no longer a secret.Collection: Two
The less heart, the more comfort.Collection: Heart