Quotes from Pierre Corneille

The manner of giving is worth more than the gift.

Danger breeds best on too much confidence.

How delicious is pleasure after torment!

Love lives on hope, and dies when hope is dead; It is a flame which sinks for lack of fuel.

If you betray me, can I take a better revenge than to love the person you hate?

He who allows me to rule is in fact my master.

To die for one's country is such a worthy fate that all compete for so beautiful a death.

A first impulse was never a crime.

He who allows himself to be insulted deserves to be.

An example is often a deceptive mirror, and the order of destiny, so troubling to our thoughts, is not always found written in things past.

The subject of a good tragedy must not be realistic.

Clemency is the noblest trait which can reveal a true monarch to the world.

I can be forced to live without happiness, but I will never consent to live without honor.

Sir, what does it matter whom I serve, so long as I am right?

I would tell you I love you, Sir, if I knew what it was to love.

I love you much less than my God, but much more than myself.

Those who easily forgive invite offenses.

True, I am young, but for souls nobly born valor doesn't await the passing of years.

It is hard to hate what one has loved, and a half-extinguished fire is soon relit.

And the combat ceased, for want of combatants.

Peace is produced by war.

Liberty may be of no more use Than stirring up the flame of civil wars; Then, by disorder fatal to the world, One wants no king, the other wants no equal.

Time is a great manager: it arranges things well.

Ambition, having reached the summit, longs to descend.