Mercedes De Acosta Quotes

As I pass out into the blackness,
I wonder if I have ever really known you -
Or if you exist at all,
And are not but a twisted, fevered, silver creation of my brain.
And the unreality of you comes over me,
Like a mist upon a lonely sea. ~ Mercedes De Acosta

You will pay on earth for everything you've done, even to the last laugh. ~ Fe Acosta De Gonzalez

If we want to find the manna hidden in our vocation, let us restrict and confine all our desires within it. ~ Vincent De Paul

A man is born an artist as a hippopotamus is born a hippopotamus; and you can no more make yourself one than you can make yourself a giraffe. ~ Alain De Botton

The mirror follows us, but it's not a friend. (Le miroir nous suit, - Mais n'est un ami.) ~ Charles De Leusse

I strip myself emotionally when I confess need – that I would be lost without you, that I am not necessarily the independent person I have tried to appear, but am a far less admirable weakling with little clue of life's course or meaning. When I cry and tell you things I trust you will keep for yourself, that would destroy me if others were to learn of them, when I give up the game of gazing seductively at parties and admit it's you I care about, I am stripping myself of a carefully sculpted illusion of invulnerability. I become as defenseless and trusting as the person in the circus trick, strapped to a board into which another is throwing knives to within inches of my skin, knives I have myself freely given. I allow you to see me humiliated, unsure of myself, vacillating, drained of self-confidence, hating myself and hence unable to convince you [should I need to] to do otherwise. I am weak when I have shown you my panicked face at three in the morning, anxious before existence, free of the blustering, optimistic philosophies I had proclaimed over dinner. I learn to accept the enormous risk that though I am not the confident pin-up of everyday life, though you have at hand an exhaustive catalogue of my fears and phobias, you may nevertheless love me. ~ Alain De Botton

As soon as they're out of your sight, you are out of their mind. ~ Walter De La Mare

What we committed in the Indies stands out among the most unpardonable offenses ever committed against God and mankind and this trade [in Indian slaves] as one of the most unjust, evil, and cruel among them. ~ Bartolome De Las Casas

It's preferable to die than to lose the life. ~ Frei Tito De Alencar Lima

It must not be forgotten that it is especially dangerous to enslave men in the minor details of life. For my part, I should be inclined to think freedom
less necessary in the great things than in the little ones, if it were possible to be secure of the one without the other. ~ Alexis De Tocqueville

Defeat may prove to have been the only path to resurrection, despite its ugliness. ~ Antoine De Saint Exupery

Be neat, Philothea; let nothing be negligent about you. It is a kind of contempt of those with whom we converse, to frequent their company in uncomely apparel; but, at the same time, avoid all affectation, vanity, curiosity, or levity in your dress. Keep yourself always, as much as possible, on the side of plainness and modesty, which, without doubt, is the greatest ornament of beauty, and the best excuse for the want of it. ~ Saint Francis De Sales

To escape the distress caused by regret for the past or fear about the future, this is the rule to follow: leave the past to the infinite mercy of God, the future to His good Providence, give the present wholly to His love by being faithful to His grace. ~ Jean-Pierre De Caussade

One may outwit another, but not all the others. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

At three o'clock this afternoon Evelyn Wastneys died. I am Evelyn Wastneys, and I died, standing at the door of an old country home in Ireland... ~ Mrs. George De Horne Vaizey

He tried to look at her face in the hope that she was not pretty. Beautiful women depressed him. They were like Mercedes, BlackBerry phones and sea-view homes. ~ Manu Joseph

Progressively saved by the machine from the anxieties that bound his hands and mind to material toil, relieved of a large part of his work and compelled to an ever-increasing speed of action by the devices which his intelligence cannot help ceaselessly creating and perfecting, man is about to find himself abruptly plunged into idleness. ~ Pierre Teilhard De Chardin

I think small business is struggling in New York City. It's a fantastic market, it's a very appealing market, there's lots of opportunity, at the same time it's a very difficult place to build a small business. ~ Bill De Blasio

The most telling and profound way of describing the evolution of the universe would undoubtedly be to trace the evolution of love. ~ Pierre Teilhard De Chardin

Love is tears of joy, this is the baptism of fingers. (L'amour, c'est larme de joie, - C'est le baptême des doigts) ~ Charles De Leusse

The only way to become immune to bullshit is to stop believing in it. ~ Gabbo De La Parra

On my honor, I believe it is characteristic of virtue to have nothing to do with riches!" thought he. ~ Honore De Balzac

Even imperfection itself may have its ideal or perfect state. ~ Thomas De Quincey

I let my inner smile enliven my being and enhance my health. ~ Amy Leigh Mercree

To what excesses do men rush for the sake of religion, of whose truth they are so little persuaded, and to whose precepts they pay so little regard! ~ Jean De La Bruyere

...those who deny or oppose these so pleasant delights (of virtue), do so only from jealousy, you may be sure, from the barbarous pleasure of making others as guilty and unhappy as they are. They are blind and would like everyone to be the same, they are mistaken, and would like everyone else to be mistaken; but if you could see into the depths of their hearts you would find only sorrow and repentance; all these apostles of crime are only evil and desperate people; you would not find a sincere person among them who would not admit, if he were truthful, that their poisonous words or dangerous writings had not been guided only by their passions. And what man in fact can say in cold blood that the bases of morality can be shaken without risk? What being would dare maintain that doing good and desiring good are not essentially the aim of mankind? And how can a man who will do only evil expect to be happy in a society whose strongest concern is the perpetual increase of good? But will not this apologist of crime not shudder himself when he had uprooted from all hearts the only thing which could lead to his conversion? What will stop his servants ruining him, if they have ceased to be virtuous? ~ Marquis De Sade

The more one considers the matter, the clearer it becomes that redistribution is in effect far less a redistribution of free income from the richer to the poorer, as we imagined, than a redistribution of power from the individual to the State. ~ Bertrand De Jouvenel

Surely a man must be in a parlours state to excite pity, extremely weak to inspire sympathy, or very evil-looking to make a soul tremble in a den like this, where pain must hold its tongue, poverty remain cheerful, and despair retain its self respect. ~ Honore De Balzac

It is a kind of happiness to know just how unhappy we could be. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

A good marriage (if any there be) refuses the conditions of love and endeavors to present those of amity. ~ Michel De Montaigne

I've been to Hell. You've only read about it. ~ Marquis De Sade

Come for a walk, dear. The air will do you good."
Raoul thought that she would propose a stroll in the country, far from that building which he detested as a prison whose jailer he could feel walking within the walls... the jailer Erik... But she took him to the stage and made him sit on the wooden curb of a well, in the doubtful peace and coolness of a first scene set for the evening's performance.
On another day, she wandered with him, hand in hand, along the deserted paths of a garden whose creepers had been cut out by a decorator's skillful hands. It was as though the real sky, the real flowers, the real earth were forbidden her for all time and she condemned to breathe no other air than that of the theatre. An occasional fireman passed, watching over their melancholy idyll from afar. And she would drag him up above the clouds, in the magnificent disorder of the grid, where she loved to make him giddy by running in front of him along the frail bridges, among the thousands of ropes fastened to the pulleys, the windlasses, the rollers, in the midst of a regular forest of yards and masts. If he hesitated, she said, with an adorable pout of her lips:
"You, a sailor!"
And then they returned to terra firma, that is to say, to some passage that led them to the little girls' dancing-school, where brats between six and ten were practicing their steps, in the hope of becoming great dancers one day, "covered with diamonds..." Meanwhile, Christine gave them sweets ~ Gaston Leroux