Skip to content

The woman who loves us is only a woman, but the woman we love is a celestial being whose defects disappear under the prism through which we see her.

— Émile de Girardin A Thousand Flashes of French Wit, Wisdom, and Wickedness (1902)

Another quote →

Source and credibility

Wikiquote does not flag this quote as disputed or misattributed.

Source: p. 182
Work: A Thousand Flashes of French Wit, Wisdom, and Wickedness, 1902
Source quality: Precise citation Points to a specific work with a page, chapter, date or similar locator, so you can look it up.

More by Émile de Girardin

No faith has triumphed without its martyrs.

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

Esteem is the strongest of all sympathies.

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

Illusions ruin all those whom they blind.

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

A woman by whom we are loved is a vanity; a woman whom we love is a religion.

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

Without the ideal, this inexhaustible source of all progress, what would man be? and what would society be?

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

The power of words is immense. A well-chosen word has often sufficed to stop a flying army, to change defeat into victory, and to save an empire.

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

Which is the best religion? The most tolerant.

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

Utopia! such is the name with which ignorance, folly, and incredulity have always characterized the great conceptions, discoveries, enterprises, and ideas which have illustrated the ages, and marked eras in human progress.

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

All Émile de Girardin quotes →

Topics

More quotes by Émile de Girardin

There is more poverty in the human heart than misery in life.

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

Servility is to devotion what hypocrisy is to virtue.

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

Whenever the good done to us does not touch and penetrate the heart, it wounds and irritates our vanity.

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

Instruction is to the proletary what liberty is to the slave: the latter emancipates the body, the former emancipates the intelligence.

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

Modesty is the chastity of merit, the virginity of noble souls.

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

All Émile de Girardin quotes →

You may also like

Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind,
And therefore is wing'd Cupid painted blind.

William Shakespeare A Midsummer Night's Dream (1595)

To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead.

Bertrand Russell Marriage and Morals (1929)

Not for the body, but for the heart; companion and company are needed.

Sanu Sharma

Love seldom haunts the breast where learning lies,
And Venus sets ere Mercury can rise.

Alexander Pope

Attribution

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