Nicolas Boileau
Nicolas Boileau
Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux, often known simply as Boileau, was a French poet and critic...
cease great shall winning
Great king, cease winning victories, or I shall give up writing.
mason talent
Be a mason instead, if you have a talent for that.
dinner forget fresh heart worth
Take fresh heart and never forget that a warmed-up dinner is worth nothing at all.
everywhere exposes good itself light offers says whether
Everywhere my thought offers and exposes itself to the light of day, and my verse, whether good or bad, always says something.
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.
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.
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.