Pierre Choderlos De Laclos Quotes

From that moment on my thoughts were purely for my own benefit, and I revealed only what I found it useful to reveal.

Do men ever appreciate the women they possess?

I have kept my reputation untarnished; should you not therefore have concluded that I, who was born to revenge my sex and master yours, have been able to discover methods of doing so unknown even to myself?

To punish you for your suspicions, I shall leave you to live with them: I shan't tell you anything at all.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, opportunity always knocks more than once whereas a false step can never be retraced.

Never to my mind had she looked more beautiful. Inevitably so. A woman reaches the height of her beauty – and only at this time can she inspire that intoxication of the soul which is so often talked of and so rarely experienced – when we are sure of her love, but not of her favours.

[Prévan] accordingly sought out these paragons of perfection. He was readily received into their society, and he took this for a favourable omen. He knew well enough that happy people are not so easy of access.

You accuse her of being ill-dressed. I agree. Clothes don't become her. Everything that hides her, disfigures. It is in the freedom of dishabille that she is truly ravishing.

Either you have a rival or you don't. If you have one, you must please in order to be preferred to him, and if you don't you must still please-in order to avoid having one.

Oh yes, certainly her daughter must be seduced. But that will not be enough: she must be ruined too.

There is no longer any happiness for me, no longer any peace but in the possession of this woman whom I love and hate with equal fury. I cannot tolerate my life until hers is again mine to dispose of. Then, contented and calm, I shall see her in turn buffeted by the storms that assail me now, and I shall stir up a thousand others too. I want hope and fear, faith and suspicion, all the evils devised by hate and all the blessings conferred by love, to fill her heart and to succeed one another there at my will.

When I came out into society I was 15. I already knew then that the role I was condemned to, namely to keep quiet and do what I was told, gave me the perfect opportunity to listen and observe. Not to what people told me, which naturally was of no interest to me, but to whatever it was they were trying to hide. I practiced detachment. I learned how to look cheerful while under the table I stuck a fork onto the back of my hand. I became a virtuoso of deceit. I consulted the strictest moralists to learn how to appear, philosophers to find out what to think, and novelist to see what I could get away with, and in the end it all came down to one wonderfully simple principle: win or die.

Revenge is a dish that is best served cold.

I assure you that the world is not so amusing as we imagined.