Nicolas Boileau
Nicolas Boileau
Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux, often known simply as Boileau, was a French poet and critic...
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.]
lovely truth-is fairs
Nothing but truth is lovely, nothing fair.
nature spring break-through
Nature always springs to the surface and manages to show what she is. It is vain to stop or try to drive her back. She breaks through every obstacle, pushes forward, and at last makes for herself a way.
understanding ease flow
Whatever we well understand we express clearly, and words flow with ease.
friendship praise advise
Attach yourself to those who advise you rather than praise you.
ignorance science admire
Ignorance is always ready to admire itself. Procure yourself critical friends.
world can-not please
He [Moliere] pleases all the world, but can- not please himself.
time moments draws
Time flies and draws us with it. The moment in which I am speaking is already far from me.
beauty beautiful truth
Nothing is really beautiful but truth, and truth alone is lovely.
exalted light rhyme treating whether
Whether one is treating a light or an exalted subject, let the sense and the rhyme always agree.