Moliere Quotes

Good Heavens! For more than forty years I have been speaking prose without knowing it. ~ Moliere

How easily a fathers tenderness is recalled, and how quickly a son's offenses vanish at the slightest word of repentance! ~ Moliere

People are all alike in their promises. It is only in their deeds that they differ. ~ Moliere

If Claret is the king of natural wines, Burgundy is the queen. ~ Moliere

Each day my reason tells me so; But reason doesn't rule in love, you know. ~ Moliere

Music and dance are all you need. ~ Moliere

The world, dear Agnes, is a strange affair. ~ Moliere

Writing is a little bit like prostitution. First you do it for love. Then you do it for a few friends. Then you do it for money. ~ Moliere

Birth is nothing where virtue is not ~ Moliere

Virtue is the first title of nobility. ~ Moliere

I am, I fear, Inclined to be unfashionably sincere. ORONTE ~ Moliere

Men often marry in hasty recklessness and repent afterward all their lives. ~ Moliere

Our minds need relaxation, and give way unless we mix with work a little play. ~ Moliere

The scandal of the world is what makes the offence; it is not sinful to sin in silence. ~ Moliere

I am strongly moved to fly into some desert to avoid all approach of human creatures ~ Moliere

It is fine for a woman to know a lot; but I don't want her to have this shocking desire to be learned for learnedness sake. When I ask a woman a question, I like her to pretend to ignore what she really knows. ~ Moliere

Things are only worth what you make them worth. ~ Moliere

There is no praise to bear the sort that you put in your pocket. ~ Moliere

The maturing process of becoming a writer is akin to that of a harlot. First you do it for love, then for a few friends, and finally only for money. ~ Moliere

Debts are nowadays like children begot with pleasure, but brought forth in pain. ~ Moliere

I would like to be like my father and all the rest of my ancestors who never married. ~ Moliere

Life is a tragedy to those who feel and a comedy to those who think. ~ Moliere

Without dance, a man can do nothing. ~ Moliere

I can always do theater; I can do Ibsen, I can do Macbeth, I can do Chekhov, I can do Moliere, Othello, I can do Richard III. ~ Ving Rhames

Gold makes the ugly beautiful. ~ Moliere

To marry a fool is to be no fool. ~ Moliere

Words and deeds are far from being one. Much that is talked about is left undone. ~ Moliere

Unbroken happiness is a bore: it should have ups and downs. ~ Moliere

Reasoning is the pastime of my whole household, and all this reasoning has driven out Reason. ~ Moliere

With a smile we should instruct our youth ... ~ Moliere

The idea was to anger the drama kids, not hurt any of them. I'm not a deer hunter. I decided to prey on their most basic, cherished fear. "This play sucks! No one likes it. Not even the junior high bloggers will review this lame excuse for a Moliere," I yelled, and chucked tomatillos at the stager, over, under, and past the ducking, traumatized performers in French aristocrat costumes. ~ Sarah Skilton

Your humour, madam, Gives any and everyone too easy access Into your heart. You have too many lovers Besieging you - a thing I can't endure. ~ Moliere

The road is long fro the project to its completion. ~ Moliere

He makes his cook his merit, and the world visits his dinners and not him. ~ Moliere

The secret to fencing consists in two things: to give and to not receive. ~ Moliere

You have but to hold forth in cap and gown, and any gibberish becomes learning, all nonsense passes for sense. ~ Moliere

We always speak well when we manage to be understood. ~ Moliere

The more we love our friends, the less we flatter them; it is by excusing nothing that pure love shows itself. ~ Moliere

There's nothing quite like tobacco: it's the passion of decent folk, and whoever lives without tobacco doesn't deserve to live. ~ Moliere

Human weakness is to desire to know what one does not want to know. ~ Moliere

In society one needs a flexible virtue; too much goodness can be blamable. ~ Moliere

I have the fault of being a little more sincere than is proper. ~ Moliere

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

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

The art of flatterers is to take advantage of the foibles of the great, to foster their errors, and never to give advice which may annoy. ~ Moliere

Reason is not what decides love. ~ Moliere

The more powerful the obstacle, the more glory we have in overcoming it; and the difficulties with which we are met are the maids of honor which set off virtue. ~ Moliere

Here in the world, each human frailty Provides occasion for philosophy, And that is virtue's noblest exercise; ~ Moliere

According to the saying of an ancient philosopher, one should eat to live, and not live to eat ~ Moliere

And with his arms crossed he looks pityingly down from his spiritual height on everything that anyone says. ~ Moliere

Flatterers are always to blame for the vices which prevail among mankind ~ Moliere

When you model yourself on people, you should try to resemble their good sides. ~ Moliere

Had I not done Shakespeare, Pinter, Moliere and things such as 'Godspell' - I played Judas in a hugely successful production before I did 'Elm Street' - I'd probably be on a psychiatrist's couch saying: 'Freddy ruined me.' But I'd already done 13 movies and years of non-stop theatre. ~ Robert Englund

To live without loving is not really to live. ~ Moliere

Two wives? That exceeds the custom. ~ Moliere

All is wholesome in the absence of excess. ~ Moliere

We should look long and carefully at ourselves before we pass judgement on others. ~ Moliere

All right, then: I'm deluded and I'm blind. CLITANDRE ~ Moliere

If you make yourself understood, you're always speaking well. ~ Moliere

Better to be married than dead! ~ Moliere

What! Would you make no distinction between hypocrisy and devotion? Would you give them the same names, and respect the mask as you do the face? Would you equate artifice and sincerity? Confound appearance with truth? Regard the phantom as the very person? Value counterfeit as cash? ~ Moliere

A lover tries to stand in well with the pet dog of the house. ~ Moliere

The public scandal is what constitutes the offence: sins sinned in secret are no sins at all. ~ Moliere

The absence of the beloved, short though it may last, always lasts too long. ~ Moliere

Evil exists only when its known. Adam and Eve were public in their fall. To sin in private is not to sin at all ~ Moliere

A wise man is superior to any insults which can be put upon him, and the best reply to unseemly behavior is patience and moderation. ~ Moliere

The heart can do anything. ~ Moliere

Cover that bosom that I must not see: souls are wounded by such things. ~ Moliere

Anyone may be an honorable man, and yet write verse badly. ~ Moliere

Of all the noises known to man, opera is the most expensive. ~ Moliere

I hate all men, the ones because they are mean and vicious, and the others for being complaisant with the vicious ones. ~ Moliere

Consistency is only suitable for ridicule. ~ Moliere

Man, I can assure you, is a nasty creature. ~ Moliere

The world will not alter for all your meddling. ~ Moliere

True, Heaven prohibits certain pleasures; but one can generally negotiate a compromise. ~ Moliere

It is difficult to be funny and great at the same time. Aristophanes and Moliere and Mark Twain must sit below Aristotle and Bossuet and Emerson. ~ Stephen Leacock

No, you shall be, my faith! Tartuffified. ~ Moliere

Unreasonable haste is the direct road to error. ~ Moliere

A learned fool is more a fool than an ignorant fool. ~ Moliere

The defects of human nature afford us opportunities of exercising our philosophy, the best employment of our virtues. If all men were righteous, all hearts true and frank and loyal, what use would our virtues be? ~ Moliere

The genuine Amphitryon is the Amphitryon with whom we dine. ~ Moliere

I always do the first line well, but I have trouble doing the others. ~ Moliere

I think a lot of people who go to drama school have this ease with the text and they all have five monologues that they know by heart, and I never had that. I've done Chekov and I've done Moliere and I've done classic stuff ~ Tavis Smiley

No one is safe from slander. The best way is to pay no attention to it, but live in innocence and let the world talk. ~ Moliere

The road is a long one from the projection of a thing to its accomplishment. ~ Moliere

Perfect reason flees all extremity, and leads one to be wise with sobriety. ~ Moliere

Ah, there are no children nowadays. ~ Moliere

I have the defect of being more
sincere than persons wish. ~ Moliere

Grammar, which knows how to control even kings. ~ Moliere

Its as if you think you'd never find Reason and the Sacred intertwined ~ Moliere

We must take the good with the bad; For the good when it's good, is so very good That the bad when it's bad can't be bad! ~ Moliere

Perfect reason avoids all extremes. ~ Moliere

Age brings about everything; but it is not the time, Madam, as we know, to be a prude at twenty. ~ Moliere

No matter what Aristotle and the Philosophers say, nothing is equal to tobacco; it's the passion of the well-bred, and he who lives without tobacco lives a life not worth living. ~ Moliere

Even Rome cannot grant us a dispensation from death. ~ Moliere

I will not leave you until I have seen you hanged. ~ Moliere

I'm always keeping an eye out for a period piece. I was trained in theatre, so most of the things we did were classical - Shakespeare, Moliere, and Chekhov. ~ Dagmara Dominczyk

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! ~ Moliere

That any gentleman should always keep
In stern control this writing itch we're seized with; That he must hold in check the great impatience We feel to give the world these idle pastimes; For, through this eagerness to show our works, 'Tis likely we shall cut a foolish figure. ~ Moliere

We die only once, and for such a long time. ~ Moliere