QUOTES AND IMAGES: MEMOIRS OF CARDINAL DE RETZ



THE MEMOIRS OF CARDINAL DE RETZ

By Cardinal de Retz



Always judged of actions by men, and never men by their actions

Always to sacrifice the little affairs to the greater

Arms which are not tempered by laws quickly become anarchy

Associating patience with activity

Assurrance often supplies the room of good sense

Blindness that make authority to consist only in force

Bounty, which, though very often secret, had the louder echo

Buckingham had been in love with three Queens

By the means of a hundred pistoles down, and vast promises

Civil war as not powerful enough to conclude a peace

Civil war is one of those complicated diseases

Clergy always great examples of slavish servitude

Confounded the most weighty with the most trifling

Contempt—the most dangerous disease of any State

Dangerous to refuse presents from one's superiors

Distinguished between bad and worse, good and better

Fading flowers, which are fragrant to-day and offensive tomorrow

False glory and false modesty

Fool in adversity and a knave in prosperity

Fools yield only when they cannot help it

Good news should be employed in providing against bad

He weighed everything, but fixed on nothing

He knew how to put a good gloss upon his failings

He had not a long view of what was beyond his reach

Help to blind the rest of mankind, and they even become blinder

His ideas were infinitely above his capacity

His wit was far inferior to his courage

Impossible for her to live without being in love with somebody

Inconvenience of popularity

Insinuation is of more service than that of persuasion

Is there a greater in the world than heading a party?

Kinds of fear only to be removed by higher degrees of terror

Laws without the protection of arms sink into contempt

Man that supposed everybody had a back door

Maxims showed not great regard for virtue

Mazarin: embezzling some nine millions of the public money

Men of irresolution are apt to catch at all overtures

More ambitious than was consistent with morality

My utmost to save other souls, though I took no care of my own

Need of caution in what we say to our friends

Neither capable of governing nor being governed

Never had woman more contempt for scruples and ceremonies

Nothing is so subject to delusion as piety

Oftener deceived by distrusting than by being overcredulous

One piece of bad news seldom comes singly

Only way to acquire them is to show that we do not value them

Passed for the author of events of which I was only the prophet

Poverty so well became him

Power commonly keeps above ridicule

Pretended to a great deal more wit than came to his share

Queen was adored much more for her troubles than for her merit

She had nothing but beauty, which cloys when it comes alone

So indiscreet as to boast of his successful amours

Strongest may safely promise to the weaker what he thinks fit

The subdivision of parties is generally the ruin of all

The wisest fool he ever saw in his life

Those who carry more sail than ballast

Thought he always stood in need of apologies

Transitory honour is mere smoke

Treated him as she did her petticoat

Useful man in a faction because of his wonderful complacency

Vanity to love to be esteemed the first author of things

Verily believed he was really the man which he affected to be

Virtue for a man to confess a fault than not to commit one

We are far more moved at the hearing of old stories

Weakening and changing the laws of the land

Who imagine the head of a party to be their master

Whose vivacity supplied the want of judgment

Wisdom in affairs of moment is nothing without courage

With a design to do good, he did evil

Yet he gave more than he promised

You must know that, with us Princes, words go for nothing



If you wish to read the entire context of any of these quotations, select a short segment and copy it into your clipboard memory—then open the following eBook and paste the phrase into your computer's find or search operation.

THE END