Madame du Deffand

Marie Anne de Vichy-Chamrond, marquise du Deffand

Marie Anne de Vichy-Chamrond, marquise du Deffand (1697 – September 23, 1780) was a French hostess and patron of the arts.

Quotes

• La distance n'y fait rien; il n'y a que le premier pas qui coûte.
  • The distance is nothing; it is only the first step that is difficult.
    • Comment on the legend told by the Cardinal de Polignac that St. Denis, carrying his head in his hands, walked two leagues. Letter to Jean Le Rond d'Alembert (7 July 1763). Voltaire wrote to Madame du Deffand (January 1764) that one of her bon-mots was quoted in the notes of La Pucelle, canto 1: "Il n'y a que le premier pas qui coûte."

• Il a inventé l'histoire.
  • He has invented history.
    • Referring to Voltaire; quoted in Édouard Fournier, L'esprit dans l'histoire: Recherches et curiosités sur les mots historiques, third edition (1879), ch. XLVII (p. 306)

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

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

• All truths are not to be uttered; still it is always good to hear them.
  • p. 9

• Women are too imaginative and sensitive to have much logic.
  • p. 67

• Vanity ruins more women than love.
  • p. 165

• Women are never stronger than when they arm themselves with their weakness.
  • p. 177

• Old acquaintances are better than new friends.
  • p. 179

• One is no more the master of his impressions than of his coughing or sneezing.
  • p. 185

• Shallow men speak of the past, wise men of the present, and fools of the future.
  • p. 204

• We all drink at the spring of happiness in a fractured vase: when it reaches our lips, there is almost nothing left in it.
  • p. 221