Delphine de Girardin

Delphine de Girardin

Delphine de Girardin (24 January 1804 – 29 June 1855), known by her nom-de-plume Vicomte Delaunay, was a French writer.

Quotes

  • Aimer qui vous aime, admirer qui vous admire, en un mot, être l'idole de son idole! ... C'est trop, c'est dépasser les joies humaines, c'est déruber le feu du ciel!
    • To love one who loves you, to admire one who admires you, to be the idol of your idol! ... It is too much, it exceeds human happiness, it is stealing fire from heaven!
    • Le Croix de Berny (1845) Lettre XXXIX. Paris: Librairie Nouvelle, 1855, p. 299
  • Les esprits dont la mission est de détruire les préjugés, sont précisément ceux qui ont la plus de préjugés, et qui les professent avec le plus d'aveuglement.
    • The minds whose mission is to destroy prejudices are precisely those who have the most prejudices and profess them most blindly.
    • Lettres Parisiennes, new ed. vol. 1 (1862) p. 107: Lettre XI (24 May 1837)
  • Quand on veut dessécher un marais, on ne fait pas en voter les grenouilles!
    • When you want to drain the marsh, you don't consult the frogs.
    • Lettres Parisiennes, new ed. vol. 4 (1868) p. 267: Lettre VII (11 July 1847)

Attributed

  • For ages happiness has been represented as a huge precious stone, impossible to find, which people seek for hopelessly. It is not so — happiness is a mosaic, composed of a thousand little stones, which, separately and of themselves, have little value, but which, united with art form a graceful design. Set the mosaic carefully, and you have a beautiful ornament; learn to understand intelligently the passing enjoyments which chance, which your character gives you, or which Heaven sends you, and you have an agreeable existence. Why always look to the horizon when there are such fine roses in the garden you live in?
    • Ballou's Pictorial Drawing-Room Companion, vol. 13, no. 18 (Oct. 31, 1857) p. 286
  • Good taste is the modestly of the mind; that is why it cannot be either imitated or acquired.
    • Maturin M. Ballou (ed.) Treasury of Thought (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Co., 1881) p. 210
  • Hope, alas! is our waking dream.
    • Treasury of Thought, p. 240
  • Infidelity, like death, admits of no degrees.
    • Treasury of Thought, p. 257
  • I do not believe in virtue, but I do believe in innocence. They are very different. Innocence is ignorance.
    • Treasury of Thought, p. 265
  • Our instinct inspires us, — warns us, our intelligence scents out what our reason docs not discover, for instinct is the nose of the mind.
    • Treasury of Thought, p. 266
  • Love with men is not a sentiment, but an idea.
    • Treasury of Thought, p. 306
  • We are only vulnerable and ridiculous through our pretensions.
    • Treasury of Thought, p. 417
  • Self-interest, that leprosy of the age, attacks us from infancy, and we are startled to observe little heads calculate before knowing how to reflect.
    • Treasury of Thought, p. 465
  • It has been said that society is for the happy, the rich; we should rather say the happy have no need of it.
    • Treasury of Thought, p. 483
  • O, how true it is there can be no tête-à-tête where vanity reigns!
    • Treasury of Thought, p. 537
  • Treasures are not for youth; at twenty years one does not know how to be rich, or to be loved.
    • Treasury of Thought, p. 570
  • There is only one proper way to wear a beautiful dress: to forget you are wearing it.
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