Molière Quotes

Hypocrisy is a fashionable vice, and all fashionable vices pass for virtue.

Mon Dieu, que vous êtes vulgaire ! Pour moi, un de mes étonnements, c'est que vous ayez pu faire une fille si spirituelle que moi.

Reason is not what decides love.

DORINE. By my faith, With such a fine broad back, good Mr. Loyal, A little beating would become you well. MR. LOYAL. My girl, such infamous words are actionable. And warrants can be issued against women.

We ought to punish pitilessly that shameful pretence of friendly intercourse. I like a man to be a man, and to show on all occasions the bottom of his heart in his discourse. Let that be the thing to speak, and never let our feelings be beneath vain compliments

Ceux de qui la conduite offre le plus à rire Sont toujours sur autrui les premiers à médire.

Tell me to whom you are addressing yourself when you say that. I am addressing myself—I am addressing myself to my cap.

The honour of gainsaying has so many charms for him, that he very often takes up the cudgels against himself; he combats his own sentiments as soon as he hears them from other folks’ lips.

There is nothing I detest so much as the contortions of these great time-and-lip servers, these affable dispensers of meaningless embraces, these obliging utterers of empty words, who view every one in civilities

Así va el mundo. Muchos adquieren opinión de doctos, no por lo que efectivamente saben, sino por el concepto que forma de ellos la ignorancia de los demás.

...y, por dejarlo claro, el amigo del género humano, no lo es mío.

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.

If all hearts were candid, just, and tractable, most of our virtues would be useless to us, inasmuch as their functions are to bear, without annoyance, the injustice of others in our good cause; and just in the same way as a heart full of virtue

Writing is like prostitution. First you do it for love, and then for a few close friends, and then for money.

CLEANTE. That is the usual strain of all your kind; They must have every one as blind as they. They call you atheist if you have good eyes; And if you don't adore their vain grimaces, You've neither faith nor care for sacred things. No, no; such talk can't frighten me; I know What I am saying; heaven sees my heart. We're not the dupes of all your canting mummers; There are false heroes — and false devotees; And as true heroes never are the ones Who make much noise about their deeds of honour, Just so true devotees, whom we should follow, Are not the ones who make so much vain show. What! Will you find no difference between Hypocrisy and genuine devoutness? And will you treat them both alike, and pay The self-same honour both to masks and faces Set artifice beside sincerity, Confuse the semblance with reality, Esteem a phantom like a living person, And counterfeit as good as honest coin? Men, for the most part, are strange creatures, truly! You never find them keep the golden mean; The limits of good sense, too narrow for them, Must always be passed by, in each direction; They often spoil the noblest things, because They go too far, and push them to extremes. I merely say this by the way, good brother.