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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




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Memoirs of Cardinal De Retz
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