Jean Racine
Jean Racine
Jean Racine, baptismal name Jean-Baptiste Racine, was a French dramatist, one of the three great playwrights of 17th-century France, and an important literary figure in the Western tradition. Racine was primarily a tragedian, producing such "examples of neoclassical perfection" as Phèdre, Andromaque, and Athalie, although he did write one comedy, Les Plaideurs, and a muted tragedy, Esther, for the young...
NationalityFrench
ProfessionPlaywright
Date of Birth22 December 1639
CountryFrance
Small crimes always precede great crimes. Whoever has been able to transgress the limits set by law may afterwards violate the most sacred rights; crime, like virtue, has its degrees, and never have we seen timid innocence pass suddenly to extreme licentiousness.
How admirable and beautiful is the simplicity of the Evangelists! They never speak injuriously of the enemies of Jesus Christ, of His judges, nor of His executioners. They report the facts without a single reflection. They comment neither on their Master's mildness when He was smitten, nor on His constancy in the hour of His ignominious death, which they thus describe: "And they crucified Jesus.
A benefit cited by way of reproach is equivalent to an injury.
Crime, like virtue, has its degrees.
I loved you when you were unfaithful; what would I have done if you were true?
I felt for my crime a just terror; I looked on my life with hate, and my passion with horror.
To save our imperiled honor everything must be sacrificed, even virtue.
You feign guilt in order to justify yourself.
The day is not purer than the depths of my heart.
Often it is fatal to live too long.
She wavers, she hesitates: in a word, she is a woman.
There may be guilt when there is too much virtue.
The face of tyranny Is always mild at first.
Pain is unjust, and all the arguments That cannot soothe it only rouse suspicion.