Quotes from Pierre Corneille

We never taste a perfect joy our happiest successes are mixed with sadness.

Guess if you can, choose if you dare.

Happiness seems made to be shared.

The worst of all states is the people's state.

Peace is produced by war.

Danger breeds best on too much confidence.

He who allows himself to be insulted, deserves to be.

Love is a tyrant sparing none.

Love is the extra effort we make in our dealings with those whom we do not like and once you understand that, you understand all. This idea that love overtakes you is nonsense. This is but a polite manifestation of sex. To love another you have to undertake some fragment of their destiny.

Love lives on hope, and dies when hope is dead

Those who easily forgive invite offenses.

The crime and not the scaffold makes the shame.

In the service of Caesar, everything is legitimate.

As great as kings may be, they are what we are: they can err like other men.

All great virtues become great men. [Fr., Toutes grandes vertus conviennent aux grands hommes.]

Every brave man is a man of his word; to such base vices he cannot stoop, and shuns more than death the shame of lying.

Ah, though a Roman, I am not less a man.

Deceit is the game of petty spirits, and that is by nature a woman's quality.

I am Roman, alas, because Horace is Roman.

Good fortune leads one to the highest glory, But to renounce it calls for equal courage.

One ought to have a good memory when he has told a lie

It takes good memory to keep up a lie

All great virtues become great men.

Happiness is meant to be shared.