Words matter. These are the best Pierre Corneille Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
He who can live in infamy is unworthy of life.
We triumph without glory when we conquer without danger.
It takes good memory to keep up a lie.
One often calms one’s grief by recounting it.
Each instant of life is a step toward death.
A good memory is needed after one has lied.
I don’t know how to defend myself: surprised innocence cannot imagine being under suspicion.
To die for one’s country is such a worthy fate that all compete for so beautiful a death.
He who pardons easily invites offense.
A first impulse was never a crime.
To vanquish without peril is to triumph without glory.
Guess, if you can, and choose, if you dare.
Brave men are brave from the very first.
Ambition aspires to descend.
When the patient loves his disease, how unwilling he is to allow a remedy to be applied.
Every man of courage is a man of his word.
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.
Danger breeds best on too much confidence.
Reason and love are sworn enemies.
One is often guilty by being too just.
True, I am young, but for souls nobly born valor doesn’t await the passing of years.
Deceit is the game of petty spirits, and that is by nature a woman’s quality.
Flee an enemy who knows your weakness.
Happiness seems made to be shared.
In the service of Caesar, everything is legitimate.
I have deserved neither so much honor or so much disgrace.
How delicious is pleasure after torment!
I see, I know, I believe, I am undeceived.
He who allows himself to be insulted deserves to be.
After having won a scepter, few are so generous as to disdain the pleasures of ruling.
Do your duty and leave the rest to heaven.
To win without risk is to triumph without glory.
Peace is produced by war.
I would not like a king who could obey.
Treachery is noble when aimed at tyranny.
We never taste a perfect joy; our happiest successes are mixed with sadness.
When there is no peril in the fight there is no glory in the triumph.
The crime and not the scaffold makes the shame.
Oh rage! Oh despair! Oh age, my enemy!
He who allows me to rule is in fact my master.
Self-love is the source of all our other loves.
It is a crime against the State to be powerful enough to commit one.
My sweetest hope is to lose hope.
Force is legitimate where gentleness avails not.
The greater the effort, the greater the glory.
A true king is neither husband nor father; he considers his throne and nothing else.
It matters more how one gives than what one gives.
It is the crime not the scaffold which is the disgrace.
Just vengeance does not call for punishment.
Alas, I emerge from one disaster to fall into a worse.
