Skip to content

Crime is aye crime, and beauty ne'er can be
A veil to cover its deformity.

— Prosper Jolyot de Crébillon

Le crime est toujours crime, et jamais la beauté
N'a pu servir de voile à sa difformité.

Original text (French)

Another quote →

Source and credibility

Wikiquote does not flag this quote as disputed or misattributed.

Source: Pyrrhus, Act IV, Sc. IV (Pyrrhus), as reported by Harbottle (1904), p. 125
Source quality: Secondhand citation Quoted from another book or article rather than from the original.

More by Prosper Jolyot de Crébillon

By innocence imposture's aye confounded.

I know the fury of your jealous suspicions,
But I have too much virtue to fear my husband.

The suffering heart is surest oracle.

My pen was never dipped in gall.

Discours de réception à l’Académie Française (1731)

One is not criminal because ambitious.

All Prosper Jolyot de Crébillon quotes →

Topics

Beauty

More quotes by Prosper Jolyot de Crébillon

At the court of a tyrant, whether usurped or legitimate, the least suspicion always amounts to crime, and to be suspected is to be proscribed.

La crainte fit les dieux, l'audace a fait les rois.

As all the world the hero's exploits sings,
So should good deeds the glory be of kings.

'Tis crime that must be ended, and not vengeance.

The word of kings is but an empty shadow.

All Prosper Jolyot de Crébillon quotes →

You may also like

Beautiful objects are wrought by study through effort, but ugly things are reaped automatically without toil.

Democritus Freeman (1948)

True beauty dwells in deep retreats,
Whose veil is unremoved
Till heart with heart in concord beats,
And the lover is beloved.

William Wordsworth

The great artists are the ones who dare to entitle to beauty things so natural that when they're seen afterward, people say: Why did I never realize before that this too was beautiful?

André Gide The Immoralist (1902)

Beauty itself doth of itself persuade
The eyes of men without an orator.

William Shakespeare The Rape of Lucrece (1594)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Prosper Jolyot de Crébillon (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.