Best quotes by Anne-Therese de Marguenat de Courcelles
Anne-Therese de Marguenat de Courcelles
French writer and salonniere
Anne-Thérèse de Marguenat de Courcelles (1647 – 12 July 1733), who on her marriage became Madame de Lambert, Marquise de Saint-Bris, and is generally known as the Marquise de Lambert, was a French writer and salonniere.
During the Regence, when the court of the Duchesse du Maine, at the Château de Sceaux, was amusing itself with frivolities, and when that of the Duc d’Orleans, at the Palais-Royal, was devoting itself to debauchery, the salon of the Marquise de Lambert passed for the temple of propriety and good taste, in a reaction against the cynicism and vulgarity of the time. For the cultivated people of the time, it was a true honor to be admitted to the celebrated "Tuesdays", where the dignity and high class of the "Great Century" were still in the air.
All quotes by Anne-Therese de Marguenat de Courcelles:
The pleasures of the world are deceitful; they promise more than they give. They trouble us in seeking them, they do not satisfy us when possessing them, and they make us despair in losing them.
The first rule for speaking well is to think well.
We live with our defects as with the odors we carry about us: we do not perceive them, but they incommode those who approach us.
The love of esteem is the life and soul of society; it unites us to one another: I want your approbation, you stand in need of mine. By forsaking the converse of men, we forsake the virtues necessary for society; for when one is alone, one is apt to grow negligent; the world forces you to have a guard over yourself.
Temperance adds zest to pleasure.
Perfect friendship puts us under the necessity of being virtuous. As it can only be preserved among estimable persons, it forces us to resemble them. You find in friendship the surety of good counsel, the emulation of good example, sympathy in our griefs, succor in our distress.
Politeness costs little and yields much.
One of the duties of old-age, is the management of time. The less that remains to us, the more valuable we ought to consider it.
Would you be esteemed? Live with persons that are estimable.
Simplicity is oftenest an adroit pretence.
We can easily forgive want of means; but littleness, with means, is disgusting.
The most necessary disposition to relish pleasures is to know how to be without them.
We like to know the weakness of eminent persons; it consoles us for our inferiority.