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!
  • La Croix de Berny (1855) 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

• There is only one proper way to wear a beautiful dress: to forget you are wearing it.
  • W. H. Auden and Louis Kronenberger (eds.) The Viking Book of Aphorisms (New York, 1962) p. 373

Treasury of Thought (1881)

Edited by Maturin M. Ballou. Boston, MA: Houghton, Mifflin and Co.

• Good taste is the modestly of the mind; that is why it cannot be either imitated or acquired.
  • p. 210

• Hope, alas! is our waking dream.
  • p. 240

• Infidelity, like death, admits of no degrees.
  • p. 257

• I do not believe in virtue, but I do believe in innocence. They are very different. Innocence is ignorance.
  • 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.
  • p. 266

• Love with men is not a sentiment, but an idea.
  • p. 306

• We are only vulnerable and ridiculous through our pretensions.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • p. 483

• O, how true it is there can be no tête-à-tête where vanity reigns!
  • p. 537

• Treasures are not for youth; at twenty years one does not know how to be rich, or to be loved.
  • p. 570

A Thousand Flashes of French Wit, Wisdom, and Wickedness (1902)

Edited by J. de Finod. New York: D. Appleton and Co.

• It is not easy to be a widow: one must reassume all the modesty of girlhood, without being allowed to even feign its ignorance.
  • p. 28

• A woman's life can be divided thus: the age when she dances but does not dare to waltz — it is the spring; the age when she dances and dares to waltz — it is summer; the age when she dances but prefers to waltz — it is autumn; finally, when she dances no longer — it is winter, that rigorous winter of life.
  • p. 189