Moliere Quotes

People don't mind being mean; but they never want to be ridiculous.

Folk whose own behavior is most ridiculous are always to the fore in slandering others.

Doubts are more cruel than the worst of truths. It is not only for what we do that we are held responsible, but also for what we do not do. A lover whose passion is extreme loves even the faults of the beloved

To find yourself jilted is a blow to your pride. Do your best to forget it and if you don't succeed, at least pretend to.

We are all mortals, and each is for himself.

Everything that's prose isn't verse and everything that isn't verse is prose. Now you see what it is to be a scholar!

They [zealots] would have everybody be as blind as themselves: to them, to be clear-sighted is libertinism.

It is madness beyond compare To try to reform the world.

No reason makes it right To shun accepted ways from stubborn spite; And we may better join the foolish crowd Than cling to wisdom, lonely though unbowed.

Anyone may be an honorable man, and yet write verse badly.

There's nothing people can't contrive to praise or condemn and find justification for doing so, according to their age and their inclinations.

We are easily duped by those we love.

The only people who can be excused for letting a bad book loose on the world are the poor devils who have to write for a living.

Gold makes the ugly beautiful.

It's an odd job, making decent people laugh.

How easy love makes fools of us.

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

The greater the obstacle, the more glory in overcoming it.

In clothes as well as speech, the man of sense Will shun all these extremes that give offense, Dress unaffectedly, and, without haste, Follow the changes in the current taste.

All right-minded people adore it; and anyone who is able to live without it is unworthy to draw breathe

Betrayed and wronged in everything, I’ll flee this bitter world where vice is king, And seek some spot unpeopled and apart Where I’ll be free to have an honest heart. - Molière, The Misanthrope

I prefer an interesting vice to a virtue that bores.

The trees that are slow to grow bear the best fruit.

Rest assured that there is nothing which wounds the heart of a noble man more deeply than the thought his honour is assailed.

[Dom Juan] believes neither in Heaven, nor the saints, nor God, nor the Werewolf.

Ah! devout though I may be, I am no less a man!

The duty of comedy is to correct men by amusing them.

I find medicine is the best of all trades because whether you do any good or not you still. Get your money.

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

All the satires of the stage should be viewed without discomfort. They are public mirrors, where we are never to admit that we seeourselves; one admits to a fault when one is scandalized by its censure.

When there is enough to eat for eight, there is plenty for ten.

Birth is nothing where virtue is not

The road is long fro the project to its completion.

How easily a fathers tenderness is recalled, and how quickly a son's offenses vanish at the slightest word of repentance!

People can be induced to swallow anything, provided it is sufficiently seasoned with praise.

I hate all men, the ones because they are mean and vicious, and the others for being complaisant with the vicious ones.

Men often marry in hasty recklessness and repent afterward all their lives.

Man, I can assure you, is a nasty creature.

I will maintain it before the whole world.

In order to prove a friend to one's guests, frugality must reign in one's meals; and, according to an ancient saying, one must eat to live, not live to eat.

Everyone has a right to his own course of action.

To inspire love is a woman's greatest ambition, believe me. It's the one thing woman care about and there's no woman so proud that she does not rejoice at heart in her conquests.

One easily bears moral reproof, but never mockery.

Frankly, it's good enough to lock up in a drawer.

With a smile we should instruct our youth.

Then worms shall try That long preserved virginity, And your quaint honor turn to dust, And into ashes all my lust. The grave's a fine and private place But none, I think, do there embrace.

I want people to be sincere; a man of honor shouldn't speak a single word that doesn't come straight from his heart.

People spend most of their lives worrying about things that never happen.