Madeleine de Scudéry

Madeleine de Scudéry (15 November 1607 – 2 June 1701), often known simply as Mademoiselle de Scudéry, was a French writer. She was the younger sister of Georges de Scudéry.

Attributed

• Love is a capricious creature which desires everything and can be contented with almost nothing.
  • Reported in David Newnham, "Love: Books", The Guardian (10 February 2002)

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

Reported in J. de Finod, ed., A Thousand Flashes of French Wit, Wisdom, and Wickedness (New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1902)

• Love makes mutes of those who habitually speak most fluently.

• How many people assume boldly the mask of virtue!

• Women should despise slander, and fear to provoke it.

• The head, however strong it may be, can accomplish nothing against the heart.

• Love is — I know not what; which comes — I know not whence; which is formed — I know not how; which enchants — I know not by what; and which ends — I know not when or why.

Forty Thousand Quotations (1917)

Reported in C. N. Douglas, ed., Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical (1917)

• A jealous man always finds more than he looks for.

• How delightful it would be to love if one loved always! But alas! there are no eternal loves.

• Men should keep their eyes wide open before marriage, and half shut afterwards.

• Sudden friendships rarely live to ripeness.

• The virtue which has never been attacked by temptation is deserving of no monument.

• Women detest a jealous man whom they do not love, but it angers them when a man they do love is not jealous at times.

External links

• Artamenes, or, The Grand Cyrus, translated by F. G., Gent., 5 vols. (London: Printed for H. Moseley and T. Dring, 1653–5)