Nicolas Boileau-Despreaux
Nicolas Boileau-Despreaux
Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux, often known simply as Boileau, was a French poet and critic...
NationalityFrench
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth1 November 1636
CountryFrance
writing editing four
Of every four words I write, I strike out three.
all-things
Who is content with nothing possesses all things.
rights yield support
To support those of your rights authorized by Heaven, destroy everything rather than yield; that is the spirit of the Church.
dinner eating
A warmed-up dinner was never worth much.
envy vices virtue
When we envy another, we make their virtue our vice.
soul noble virtue
Virtue alone is the unerring sign of a noble soul.
truth air urgent
Truth has not such an urgent air.
evil
Often the fear on one evil leads us into a worse.
stars thinking heaven
It is in vain a daring author thinks of attaining to the heights of Parnassus if he does not feel the secret influence of heaven and if his natal star has not formed him to be a poet.
poverty poor
Everything that poverty touches becomes frightful.
truth may seems
At times truth may not seem probable. [Fr., Le vrai peut quelquefois n'etre pas vraisemblable.]
sin committed monstrous
It is the sin which we have not committed which seems the most monstrous.
long lines ancestry
Though you be sprung in direct line from Hercules, if you show a lowborn meanness, that long succession of ancestors whom you disgrace are so many witnesses against you; and this grand display of their tarnished glory but serves to make your ignominy more evident.
gay ease poet
Happy the poet who with ease can steer From grave to gay, from lively to severe. [Lat., Heureux qui, dans ses vers, sait d'une voix legere Passer du grave au doux, du plaisant au severe.]