Mathurin Régnier

Mathurin Régnier (21 December 1573 – 22 October 1613) was a French satirist.

Quotes

• N’en desplaise aux docteurs, Cordeliers, Jacobins,
  Pardieu! les plus grands clercs ne sont pas les plus fins.
  • To divines of all kinds with due deference bowing,
    The greatest of churchmen are not the most knowing.
  • Satyre 3, fin. (Œuvres complètes, ed. Jannot, Paris, 1867)
  • Cf. Rabelais, 1, 39 (Brother Jean des Entommeures, the monk, to Gargantua); and Montaigne, 1, 24: Magis magnos clericos non sunt magis magnos sapientes.—"The greatest churchmen are not always the wisest of men."
  • Classical and Foreign Quotations, 3rd ed. (1904), no. 1456

• Aidez-vous seulement et Dieu vous aidera.
  • Only help yourself and God will help you.
  • Satyre 13
  • La Fontaine (Fables, 6, 18, Le Chartier embourbé) has Aide-toi, le ciel t’aidera—"Help thyself and Heaven will help thee." Cf. Euripides, Fragment 435:
    αὐτός τι νῦν δρῶν εἶτα δαίμονας κάλει·
    τῷ γὰρ πονοῦντι καὶ θεὸς συλλαμβάνει.
    Bestir yourself and then call on the gods,
    For heav’n assists the man that laboureth.
  • W. F. H. King, Classical and Foreign Quotations, 3rd ed. (1904), no. 66

• Chacun est artisan de sa bonne fortune.
  • Each is the architect of his good fortune.
  • Satyre 13, "Macette"
  • Cf. Appius Claudius Cæcus, Faber est suæ quisque fortunæ.—"Each man is the architect of his own fortunes."
  • W. F. H. King, Classical and Foreign Quotations, 3rd ed. (1904), no. 750

• J’ay vescu sans nul pensement,
  Me laissant aller doucement
  A la douce loy naturelle;
  Et ne scaurois dire pourquoy
  La Mort daigna penser à moy
  Qui n’ay daigné penser en elle.
  • Careless I lived, and easily
      (As nature bade) indulged each whim;
    I wonder, then, Death thought of me
      Who never thought of him.
  • His own Epitaph, version from E. Courbet’s edition of Regnier’s Works (Œuvres complètes, Paris, 1875), where in Note, p. 275, will be found a variant of the last three lines:
    Et si m’estonne fort pourquoy,
    La mort oza songer en moy
    Qui ne songeay iamais en elle.
  • Cf. the brief sepulchral record of Sextius Perpenna, composed some fifteen hundred years before (Jan Gruter, Inscriptiones Antiquæ, page 920, 9);—VIXI·QVEMADMODVM·VOLVI·QVARE·MORTVVS·SIM·NESCIO ("I lived as I liked, and why I am dead I don’t know"). Regnier lived a more than "easy" life, being at thirty already an old man, and dying quite worn out ten years later in 1613. Boileau, however, recognised his poetical gifts, saying of him, Dans son vieux style encore il y a des grâces nouvelles; as, e.g., in his satire of Les Grands Seigneurs.
  • W. F. H. King, Classical and Foreign Quotations, 3rd ed. (1904), no. 1172

• Les fous sont aux échecs les plus proches des rois.
  • In chess the fool stands next to the king.
  • Satyre 14
  • This implies that it is not only at chess that the king is surrounded by fools, but at court too. Le fou is called the bishop in the English game.
  • De V. Payen-Payne, French Idioms and Proverbs, 4th ed. (1905), p. 130