Anne-Thérèse de Marguenat de Courcelles, marquise de Lambert Quotes (1647-1733)

“We are not indeed obliged always to speak what we think, but we must always think what we speak. (p. 149).”

“The owning of faults is no hard matter for persons that find a fund within themselves to mend them. (p. 153).”

“It is not always our faults that ruin us, but the manner of our conduct after we have committed them. (p. 200).”

“To live in perpetual employment, is to travel rapidly through life. Tranquility lengthens our existence. (p. 136).”

“Birth bestows less of honour than it demands; and to boast of ancestry is but to praise the merit of others. (p. 139).”

“We live with [our defects] as we do with the perfumes that we wear, we do not smell them ; they only incommode others. (p. 195).”

“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. (p. 121).”

“The world steals us from ourselves and solitude restores us. The world is composed of a herd, which are ever flying from themselves. (p. 136).”

“With great employments and vulgar maxims, one is always restless and uneasy : it is not places, but reason, that removes anxiety from the mind. (p. 170).”

“Shame is a secret pride; and pride is an error with regard to one's own worth, and an injustice with regard to what one has a mind to appear to others. (p. 204).”

“A Persian ambassador asked the wife of Leonidas, why they paid such honors to the women at Lacedemon? "It is," replied she, "because they have entirely the forming of the men." (p. 143).”

“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. (p. 172).”

“We spoil the dispositions nature has given to women ; we neglect their education, fill their minds with nothing solid, and destine them solely to please, and to please only by their graces or their vices.”

“The principal merit which should be required in our friends, is virtue : It is that which assures us they are capable of friendship, and worthy of it : expect nothing from your connections, when they have not this foundation. (pp. 54-55).”

“A man that does not aim at raising to himself a great name, will never perform any great actions. And such as go carelessly on in the road of their professions suffer all the fatigues, without acquiring either the honour or recompense that naturally attend it. (p. 137).”

“We fancy frequently that we have no grudge but against the men, when indeed our malignity is owing to their places : persons in great posts never yet enjoyed them with the good liking of the world, which only begins to do them justice when they are out of place. (p. 148).”

“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. (p. 155).”