Jean Racine Quotes

To save our imperiled honor everything must be sacrificed, even virtue.

The quarrels of lovers are the renewal of love.

Crime like virtue has its degrees; and timid innocence was never known to blossom suddenly into extreme license.

Love is not dumb. The heart speaks many ways.

Can a faith that does nothing be called sincere?

A noble heart cannot suspect in others the pettiness and malice that it has never felt.

Me, rule? Me, place the State under my law, when my feeble reason no longer rules even myself!

All is asleep: the army, the wind, and Neptune.

Do you think you can be righteous and holy with impunity?

According as the man is, so must you humour him.

The day is not purer than the depths of my heart.

There are no secrets that time does not reveal.

None love, but they who wish to love.

The principal rule of art is to please and to move. All the other rules were created to achieve this first one.

A benefit cited by way of reproach is equivalent to an injury.

Small crimes always precede great crimes. Whoever has been able to transgress the limits set by law may afterwards violate the most sacred rights; crime, like virtue, has its degrees, and never have we seen timid innocence pass suddenly to extreme licentiousness.

I can hear those glances that you think are silent.

The face of tyranny Is always mild at first.

Extreme justice is often injustice.

Some smaller crimes always precede the great crimes.

A single word often betrays a great design.

I felt for my crime a just terror; I looked on my life with hate, and my passion with horror.

When will the veil be lifted that casts so black a night over the universe? God of Israel, lift at last the gloom: For how long will you be hidden?

My only hope lies in my despair.

On the throne, one has many worries; and remorse is the one that weighs the least.

Have there ever been more submissive slaves? Adoring, even in their irons, the God who punishes them.

Too much virtue can be criminal.

My death, taking the light from my eyes, gives back to the day the purity which they soiled.

By dying I wanted to maintain my honor, and hide a flame so black from the daylight!

He who has far to ride spares his horse.

Thank the Gods! My misery exceeds all my hopes!

How admirable and beautiful is the simplicity of the Evangelists! They never speak injuriously of the enemies of Jesus Christ, of His judges, nor of His executioners. They report the facts without a single reflection. They comment neither on their Master's mildness when He was smitten, nor on His constancy in the hour of His ignominious death, which they thus describe: "And they crucified Jesus.

I am a man, and nothing that concerns a man do I deem a matter of indifference to me.

Hell, covering all with its gloomy vapors, has cast shadows on even the holiest eyes.

The heart that can no longer love passionately must with fury hate.