Quotes from Ninon de L'Enclos

Oaths are the counterfeit money with which we pay the sacrifice of love.

Love without desire is a delusion: it does not exist in nature.

If God had to give a woman wrinkles, He might at least have put them on the soles of her feet.

When our desires are fulfilled, we never fail to realize the wealth of imagination and the paucity of reality.

If a man needs a religion to conduct himself properly in this world, it is a sign that he has either a limited mind or a corrupt heart.

Words really flattering are not those which we prepare but those which escape us unthinkingly.

The mind has great advantages over the body; however the body often furnishes little treats ... which offer the mind relief from sad thoughts.

Actors ought to be larger than life. You come across quite enough ordinary, nondescript people in daily life and I don't see why you should be subjected to them on the stage too.

Today a new sun rises for me; everything lives, everything is animated, everything seems to speak to me of my passion, everything invites me to cherish it.

There is a certain time of life, when we value a good stomach more than the mind.

The joy of the mind is the measure of its strength.

Who has not raised a tombstone, here and there, over buried hopes and dead joys, on the road of life? Like the scars of the heart, they are not to be obliterated.

Shall I tell you what makes love so dangerous? 'Tis the too high idea we are apt to form of it.

It takes a hundred times more skill to make love than to command an army.

Soft moonlight and tender love harmonize together wonderfully.

I have always sworn to my lovers to love them eternally, but for me eternity is a quarter of an hour.

Friendship should be in the singular; it can be no more plural than love.

The more sins you confess, the more books you will sell.

Hatred is nearly always honest--rarely, if ever, assumed. So much cannot be said for love.

Love never dies of starvation, but often of indigestion.

It requires infinitely a greater genius to make love, than to make war.

A woman is more influenced by what she divines than by what she is told.

There are no perfect women in the world; only hypocrites exhibit no defects.

There are other things besides beauty with which to captivate the hearts of men. The Italians have a saying: "Fair is not fair, but that which pleaseth.