Liaison Dangereuse Quotes

When one woman strikes at the heart of another, she seldom misses, and the wound is invariably fatal.

Humanity is not perfect in any fashion; no more in the case of evil than in that of good. The criminal has his virtues, just as the honest man has his weaknesses.

Truth to tell, the longer I live, the more I'm tempted to think that the only moderately worthwhile people in the world are you and I.

A man enjoys the happiness he feels, a woman the happiness she gives.

How characteristic of your perverse heart that longs only for what happens to be out of reach.

You may conquer her love of God: you will never overcome her fear of the devil.

I willingly allow that money does not guarantee happiness; but it must also be allowed that it makes happiness a great deal easier to achieve.

...it is not for the illusion of a moment to govern the choice of a lifetime.

Don't you remember that love, like medicine, is only the art of encouraging nature?

I see you are already as timid as a slave: you might as well be in love.

I am astonished at the pleasure one experiences in doing good; and I should be tempted to believe that what we call virtuous people have not so much merit as they lead us to suppose.

One must not permit oneself excesses, except with persons whom one wishes soon to leave.

Now, I'm not going to deny that I was aware of your beauty. But the point is, this has nothing to do with your beauty. As I got to know you, I began to realise that beauty was the least of your qualities. I became fascinated by your goodness. I was drawn in by it. I didn't understand what was happening to me. And it was only when I began to feel actual, physical pain every time you left the room that it finally dawned on me: I was in love, for the first time in my life. I knew it was hopeless, but that didn't matter to me. And it's not that I want to have you. All I want is to deserve you. Tell me what to do. Show me how to behave. I'll do anything you say.

Your orders are charming; your manner of giving them still more delightful; you would make tyranny itself adored.

It has become necessary for me to have this woman, so as to save myself from the ridicule of being in love with her: for to what lengths will a man not be driven by thwarted desire?

I can see that you're in love, but only in a very narrow sense. It's the love of someone that finds charms and qualities in a woman that she doesn't actually have, who puts her in a class apart with every one else in second place, and who stays attached to her even while he's abusing her.

C'est de l'amour, ou il n'en exista jamais: vous le niez bien de cent façons: mais vous le prouvez de mille.

Like most intellectuals he is intensely stupid.

He'd call me false and faithless and I've always had a weakness for those two words; next to cruel, they're the nicest words for a woman to hear, and not so hard to earn.

It was there, in particular, that I confirmed the truth that love, which we cry up as the source of our pleasures, is nothing more than an excuse for them.

They have neither thought nor being, and merely repeat indifferently and uncomprehendingly everything they hear, retaining within themselves an absolute void.

I perceive your lovers purely as the successors of Alexander the Great, incompetent joint rulers of an empire where I once ruled supreme.

Love, hatred, you have only to choose; they all sleep under the same roof; you can double your existence, caress with one hand and strike with the other.

J'ai bien besoin d'avoir cette femme, pour me sauver du ridicule d'en être amoureux:

I shall possess this woman; I shall steal her from the husband who profanes her: I will even dare ravish her from the God whom she adores. What delight, to be in turns the object and the victor of her remorse! Far be it from me to destroy the prejudices which sway her mind! They will add to my happiness and my triumph. Let her believe in virtue, and sacrifice it to me; let the idea of falling terrify her, without preventing her fall; and may she, shaken by a thousand terrors, forget them, vanquish them only in my arms.

Will you, then, never grow weary of being unjust?

...she refuses all amorous alms, and such a refusal, to my view, justifies a theft.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, opportunity always knocks more than once whereas a false step can never be retraced.

Indeed, if to be in love is not to be able to live without possessing that person one desires, to sacrifice to her one's time, one's pleasures, one's life, then I am really in love.

Ces tyrans détrônés devenus mes esclaves.

Once certain of arriving, why hurry on the journey so fast?

Who can wish for happiness that is bought at the price of reason, whose fleeting pleasures are at least followed by regret, if not remorse?

...the real way of vanquishing scruples is to leave those who have them nothing to lose.

born to avenge my sex and to dominate yours

If, for example, I had just as much love as you had virtue (and that is surely saying a lot) it is not astonishing that one should end at the same time as the other. It is not my fault.

You know better than I, Monsieur,' said he, 'that to lie with a girl is only to make her do what pleases her; there is often a great distance between that and making her do what we want.

Never to my mind had she looked more beautiful. Inevitably so. A woman reaches the height of her beauty – and only at this time can she inspire that intoxication of the soul which is so often talked of and so rarely experienced – when we are sure of her love, but not of her favours.

Certainly she must surrender but she must offer resistance; an opponent too weak to win but not too weak to put up a struggle.

To punish you for your suspicions, I shall leave you to live with them: I shan’t tell you anything at all.

I need only to be shown my mistakes and I never rest until I have retrieved them.

The arrows of love, like Achilles' sword, carry with them the remedy for the wounds they cause.

One should only permit excess with those one intends to leave soon.

From that moment on my thoughts were purely for my own benefit, and I revealed only what I found it useful to reveal.

Do men ever appreciate the women they possess?

On s'ennuie de tout, mon ange, c'est une loi de la nature; ce n'est pas ma faute. Si donc, je m'ennuie aujourd'hui d'une aventure qui m'a occupé entièrement depuis quatre mortels mois, ce n'est pas ma faute. Si, par exemple, j'ai eu juste autant d'amour que toi de vertu, et c'est surement beaucoup dire, il n'est pas étonnant que l'un ait fini en même temps que l'autre. Ce n'est pas ma faute. Il suit de là, que depuis quelque temps je t'ai trompée: mais aussi ton impitoyable tendresse m'y forçait en quelque sorte! Ce n'est pas ma faute. Aujourd'hui, une femme que j'aime éperdument exige que je te sacrifie. Ce n'est pas ma faute. Je sens bien que voilà une belle occasion de crier au parjure: mais si la Nature n'a accordé aux hommes que la constance, tandis qu'elle donnait aux femmes l'obstination, ce n'est pas ma faute. Crois-moi, choisis un autre amant, comme j'ai fait une maîtresse. Ce conseil est bon, très bon; si tu le trouve mauvais, ce n'est pas ma faute. Adieu, mon ange, je t'ai prise avec plaisir, je te quitte sans regrets: je te reviendrai peut-être. Ainsi va le monde. Ce n'est pas ma faute.

Madame de Merteuil, though indeed a woman highly regarded, has perhaps only one fault: she overestimates her ability; she's a skilful driver who enjoys guiding her chariot between rocks and precipices and whose sole justification is that she remains unscathed. We can certainly praise but it would be unwise to follow her; she agrees with that view and condemns herself for it.

Agonized by her longing to go on thinking of her lover, and her fear of damnation if she does, she has hit on the idea of praying God to make her forget him and as she keeps on making this prayer every minute of the day, she's found a way of never letting him out of her mind.

Oh, keep your warnings and your fears for those giddy women who call themselves women of feeling, whose heated imaginations persuade them that nature has placed their senses in their heads; who, having never thought about it, invariably confuse love with a lover; who, with their stupid delusions, imagine that the man with whom they have found pleasure is pleasure's only source; and, like all the superstitious, accord that faith and respect to the priest which is due to only the divinity.

I have kept my reputation untarnished; should you not therefore have concluded that I, who was born to revenge my sex and master yours, have been able to discover methods of doing so unknown even to myself?

J'ai vécu

Je sais assez, quoi qu'on en dise, qu'une occasion manquée se retrouve, tandis qu'on ne revient jamais d'une démarche précipitée.

Believe me, Vicomte, people rarely acquire the qualities they can dispense with.

I had to flatter them the whole evening to appease them; for old women must not be angered - they make young women's reputations.

إنّنا نجد أنّ ما نسميه السعادة لا يكاد يكون سوى اللذة.

When I felt annoyed I practiced looking serene, even cheerful; in my enthusiasm I went so far as to suffer pain voluntarily so as to achieve a simultaneous expression of pleasure.

Good-bye, my fair friend; beware of the amusing or capricious ideas which always seduce you too easily. Remember that in the career you are following, intelligence is not enough and that a single imprudence may become an irreparable misfortune. And finally sometime allow prudent friendship to guide your pleasures. Good-bye, I still love you as much as if you were reasonable.

When I came out into society I was 15. I already knew then that the role I was condemned to, namely to keep quiet and do what I was told, gave me the perfect opportunity to listen and observe. Not to what people told me, which naturally was of no interest to me, but to whatever it was they were trying to hide. I practiced detachment. I learned how to look cheerful while under the table I stuck a fork onto the back of my hand. I became a virtuoso of deceit. I consulted the strictest moralists to learn how to appear, philosophers to find out what to think, and novelist to see what I could get away with, and in the end it all came down to one wonderfully simple principle: win or die.

İnsan ne tam anlamıyla kötü ne de tam anlamıyla iyidir. Ahlaklı insanların bazı zayıflıkları, ahlaksızların da iyi yanları vardır. Bu düşünceyi kesin kabul etmemiz gerekir, çünkü ancak böyle bir düşünceyle hem iyilere hem de kötülere karşı insaf ve merhamet duyguları içinde oluruz. İyileri kibirden, kötüleri kederden kurtaran gene bu düşüncedir.

...but where shall happiness be found if a reciprocal love does not procure it?

Fools are here below for our minor pleasures.

Have you forgotten that love, like medicine, is simply the art of aiding nature?

opportunity always knocks more than once whereas a false step can never be retraced.

L'amour est un sentiment indépendant, que la prudence peut faire éviter, mais qu'elle ne saurait vaincre ; et qui, une fois né, ne meurt que de sa belle mort, ou du défaut absolu d'espoir.

Ah ! qu'elle se rende, mais qu'elle combatte ; que, sans avoir la force de vaincre, elle ait celle de résister ; qu'elle savoure à loisir le sentiment de sa faiblesse, et soit contrainte d'avouer sa défaite.

Haven't you realized that pleasure, which is indeed certainly the one and only reason for the two sexes to come together, is nevertheless not enough to establish a relationship between them? And that though this pleasure is preceded by desire which draws people together, it is however followed by aversion which pushes them apart? It's a law of nature which only love can change. Can we feel love whenever we want? Yet love is always needed, which would be a dreadfully tiresome thing if it hadn't fortunately been realized that it's enough for just one of the partners to feel it, thereby halving the problem, and without even incurring any great loss; in fact, one party is happy to love, the other to please, which is actually a bit less exciting but which can be combined with the pleasure of deceiving and that evens things out, so everyone's happy.

En effet, si les premiers amours paraissent, en général, plus honnêtes, et comme on dit plus purs ; s'ils sont au moins plus lents dans leur marche, ce n'est pas, comme on le pense, délicatesse ou timidité, c'est que le cœur, étonné par un sentiment inconnu, s'arrête pour ainsi dire à chaque pas, pour jouir du charme qu'il éprouve, et que ce charme est si puissant sur un cœur neuf, qu'il l'occupe au point de lui faire oublier tout autre plaisir.

God, aren't brainy people obtuse!

You'll find the pain is like the shame, you only feel it once.

How fortunate we are that women are so bad at defending themselves, otherwise we’d become their abject slaves!

Moreover it is easier, in the informality of conversation, to achieve that excitement and incoherence which is the true eloquence of love.

The wicked man has his virtues, the good man his weaknesses

Only pleasure has the right to untie the love from one’s eyes

So many women do not see in their present lover their future enemy

Oh yes, certainly her daughter must be seduced. But that will not be enough: she must be ruined too.

Love, hatred, you have only to choose: it is all there with you under the same roof. You can enjoy life, caressing with one hand and killing with the other.

On s’ennuie de tout, mon Ange, c’est une Loi de la Nature ; ce n’est pas ma faute.

Believe me, Vicomte, when a woman has become so encrusted with prejudice, she is best left to her fate. She will never be anything better than a nobody.

You accuse her of being ill-dressed. I agree. Clothes don't become her. Everything that hides her, disfigures. It is in the freedom of dishabille that she is truly ravishing.

Wanting to pay love with friendship is not to be afraid of ingratitude, but to be afraid of looking ungrateful.

Vous posséder et vous perdre, c’est acheter un moment de bonheur par une éternité de regrets.

Ah ! croyez-moi, Vicomte, quand une femme frappe dans le cœur d'une autre, elle manque rarement de trouver l'endroit sensible, et la blessure est incurable.

Dès ce moment, le doux espoir a remplacé la cruelle inquiétude. J'aurai cette femme, je l'enlèverai au mari qui la profane, j'oserai la ravir au Dieu même qu'elle adore.

Ces mots tracés au crayon s’effaceront peut-être, mais jamais les sentiments gravés dans mon cœur.

There isn't a woman who doesn't love the Perfect Man; In their wild dreams they see nothing but charms and virtues and gleefully deck out the men of their choice in all these qualities; but these glittering robes fit for a God often drape an abject model; but whatever he is, no sooner have they dressed him up than, dazzled by their own handiwork, they prostrate themselves to adore him.

Indeed, if first loves appear in general more virtuous and, as they say, more chaste; if they are at least slower in their progress; it is not, as people think, from delicacy or timidity, but because the heart, surprised by an unknown sentiment, hesitates as it were at every step to enjoy the charm it feels, and because this charm is so powerful upon a fresh heart that it forgets every other pleasure.

[Prévan] accordingly sought out these paragons of perfection. He was readily received into their society, and he took this for a favourable omen. He knew well enough that happy people are not so easy of access.

Narcissism is, in a sense, the converse of an habitual sense of sin; it consists in the habit of admiring oneself and wishing to be admired. Up to a point it is, of course, normal, and not to be deplored; it is only in its excesses that it becomes a grave evil. In many women, especially rich Society women, the capacity for feeling love is completely dried up, and is replaced by a powerful desire that all men should love them. When a woman of this kind is sure that a man loves her, she has no further use for him. The same thing occurs, though less frequently, with men; the classic example is the hero of Liaisons Dangereuses. When vanity is carried to this height, there is no genuine interest in any other person, and therefore no real satisfaction to be obtained from love.

Encore plus faux et dangereux qu’il n’est aimable et séduisant, jamais, depuis sa plus grande jeunesse, il n’a fait un pas ou dit une parole sans avoir un projet, et jamais il n’eut un projet qui ne fût malhonnête ou criminel.

Serait-ce un crime d’avoir su apprécier votre charmante figure, vos talents séducteurs, vos grâces enchanteresses, et cette touchante candeur qui ajoute un prix inestimable à des qualités déjà si précieuses ? non, sans doute : mais, sans être coupable, on peut être malheureux ; et c’est le sort qui m’attend, si vous refusez d’agréer mon hommage.

Yet I cannot believe that this talisman of love has lost all its power and I still attempt to use it. - Those who have never had occasion to feel sometimes the value of a word, of an expression, consecrated by love will find no sense in this phrase. (C. de L.)

Mais moi, qu'ai-je de commun avec ces femmes inconsidérées ? Quand m'avez-vous vue m'écarter des règles que je me suis prescrites, et manquer à mes principes ? Je dis mes principes, et je le dis à dessein : car ils ne sont pas, comme ceux des autres femmes, donnés au hasard, reçus sans examen et suivis par habitude ; ils sont le fruit de mes profondes réflexions ; je les ai crées, et je puis dire que je suis mon ouvrage.

There is no longer any happiness for me, no longer any peace but in the possession of this woman whom I love and hate with equal fury. I cannot tolerate my life until hers is again mine to dispose of. Then, contented and calm, I shall see her in turn buffeted by the storms that assail me now, and I shall stir up a thousand others too. I want hope and fear, faith and suspicion, all the evils devised by hate and all the blessings conferred by love, to fill her heart and to succeed one another there at my will.

It is very easy for you to say what I ought to do, there is nothing to prevent you; but if you had felt how much it hurts to see the grief of a person one loves, how his joy becomes yours, and how difficult it is to say No when you want to say Yes, you would not be surprised at anything; I felt it myself, I felt it very keenly, I do not yet understand it.

Je ne me rappelle jamais sans plaisir le temps où vous m'honoriez de noms plus doux. Souvent même je désire de les mériter de nouveau, et de finir par donner, avec vous, un exemple de constance au monde. Mais de plus grands intérêts nous appellent ; conquérir est notre destin ; il faut le suivre : peut-être au bout de la carrière nous rencontrerons-nous encore.

L’homme jouit du bonheur qu’il ressent, et la femme de celui qu’elle procure. Cette différence, si essentielle et si peu remarquée, influe pourtant, d’une manière bien sensible, sur la totalité de leur conduite respective. Le plaisir de l’un est de satisfaire ses désirs, celui de l’autre est surtout de les faire naître. Plaire, n’est pour lui qu’un moyen de succès ; tandis que pour elle, c’est le succès lui-même.

J’aurai cette femme; je l’enlèverai au mari qui la profane; j’oserai la ravir au Dieu même qu’elle adore. Quel délice d’être tour à tour l’objet et le vainqueur de ses remords! Loin de moi l’idée de détruire les préjugés qui l’affligent! ils ajouteront à mon bonheur et à ma gloire. Qu’elle croie à la vertu, mais qu’elle me la sacrifie; que ses fautes l’épouvantent sans pouvoir l’arrêter, et qu’agitée de mille terreurs elle ne puisse les oublier, les vaincre que dans mes bras.

Je sentis que le seul homme avec qui je pouvais parler sur cet objet, sans me compromettre, était mon Contesseur. Aussitôt je pris mon parti; je surmontai ma petite honte; et me vantant d'une faute que je n'avais pas commise, je m'accusai d'avoir fait tout ce que font les femmes. Ce fut mon expression; mais en parlant ainsi je ne savais en vérité quelle idée j'exprimais. Mon espoir ne fut ni tout à fait trompé, ni entièrement rempli; la crainte de me trahir m'empêchait de m'éclairer : mais le bon Père me fit le mal si grand que j'en conclus que le plaisir devait être extrême; et au désir de le connaitre succéda celui de le goûter.

If you regard women as people endowed with certain inalienable rights, then heterosexual sex -- as distinct from rape -- has to be something two people do together because both of them want to, but this notion of women as people is apparently baffling or objectionable to hordes of men, not just incels. Women-as-bodies are sex waiting to happen -- to men -- and women-as-people are annoying gatekeepers getting between men and female bodies, which is why there's a ton of advice about how to trick or overwhelm the gatekeeper. Not just on incel and pick-up artist online forums but as jokey stuff in movies and books, going back to Les Liaisons Dangereuses and Casanova's trophy-taking.

When have you seen me depart from the rules I have laid down to myself, and abandon my own principles? I say, my own principles, and I speak it with energy, for they are not like those of other women, dealt out by chance, received without scrutiny, and followed through custom; they are the proofs of my profound reflections; I have given them existence, and I can call them my own work. Introduced into the world whilst yet a girl, I was devoted by my situation to silence and inaction; this time I made use of for reflection and observation. Looked upon as thoughtless and heedless, paying little attention to the discourses that were held out to me, I carefully laid up those that were meant to be concealed from me.

My dear Viscount, you certainly deceive yourself in the sentiment that attaches you to M. de Tourvel. It is love, or such a passion never had existence. You deny it in a hundred shapes; but you prove it in a thousand. What means, for example, the subterfuge you use against yourself, for I believe you sincere with me, that makes you relate so circumstantially the desire you can neither conceal nor combat, of keeping this woman? Would not one imagine, you never had made any other happy, perfectly happy? [...] It is no longer the adorable, the celestial Madame de Tourvel, but an astonishing woman, a delicate sentimental woman, even to the exclusion of all others; a wonderful woman, such as a second could not be found. The same way with your unknown charm, which is not the strongest. Well; be it so: but since you never found it out till then, it is much to be apprehended you will never meet it again; the loss would be irreparable. Those, Viscount, are sure symptoms of love, or we must renounce the hope of ever finding it.