Ninon de L'Enclos Quotes

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.

Firmness is great; persistency is greater.

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

There is always a moment in the pyramid of our lives when the apex is reached.

It is not enough to be wise, one must be engaging.

After the age of eighty, all contemporaries are friends.

Fair is not fair, but that which pleaseth.

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

Soft moonlight and tender love harmonize together wonderfully.

Old age is a woman's hell.

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

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.

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

Feminine virtue is nothing but a convenient masculine invention.

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

Memory is ever active, ever true. Alas, if it were only as easy to forget!

The passions do not die out; they burn out.

Ennui, the parent of expensive and ruinous vices.

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

Never tell a loved one of an infidelity: you would be badly rewarded for your troubles. Although one dislikes being deceived, one likes even less to be undeceived.

The loss of friends is a tax on age!

The less heart, the more comfort.

Gossip, like ennui, is born of idleness.

A man is given the choice between loving women and understanding them

What is death, after all? We leave only mortals behind us.

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

Men lose more conquests by their own awkwardness than by any virtue in the woman.

Equality is the share of every one at their advent upon earth, and equality is also theirs when placed beneath it.

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

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

A sensible woman should be guided by her head when taking a husband, and by her heart when taking a lover.

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.

Love never dies of starvation, but often of indigestion.

Glances are the first billets-doux of love.

We should lay in a store of food, but never of pleasures; these should be gathered day by day.

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

Inconstancy is the child of satiety.

Gentleness! more powerful than Hercules.

One must choose between loving women and knowing them.

It is strange that modesty is the rule for women when what they most value in men is boldness.

A woman should not take a lover without the consent of her heart, nor a husband without the consent of her reason.

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

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

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

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.

That which is striking and beautiful is not always good, but that which is good is always beautiful.

Indiscretion and wickedness, be it known, are first cousins.