“Not to be loved is a misfortune, but it is an insult to be loved no longer.”

—  Montesquieu

No. 3. (Zachi writing to Usbek)
Lettres Persanes (Persian Letters, 1721)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update May 22, 2020. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Not to be loved is a misfortune, but it is an insult to be loved no longer." by Montesquieu?
Montesquieu photo
Montesquieu 34
French social commentator and political thinker 1689–1755

Related quotes

Albert Camus photo

“There is merely bad luck in not being loved; there is misfortune in not loving.”

Summer (1954), Return to Tipasa
Context: There is merely bad luck in not being loved; there is misfortune in not loving. All of us, today, are dying of this misfortune. For violence and hatred dry up the heart itself; the long fight for justice exhausts the love that nevertheless gave birth to it.

Henryk Sienkiewicz photo

“If it be a great misfortune to love another man's wife, be she ever so commonplace, it is an infinitely greater misfortune to love a virtuous woman.”

4 August
Without Dogma (1891)
Context: If it be a great misfortune to love another man's wife, be she ever so commonplace, it is an infinitely greater misfortune to love a virtuous woman. There is something in my relations to Aniela of which I never heard or read; there is no getting out of it, no end. A solution, whether it be a calamity or the fulfilment of desire, is something, but this is only an enchanted circle. If she remain immovable and I do not cease loving her, it will be an everlasting torment, and nothing else. And I have the despairing conviction that neither of us will give way.

Joyce Carol Oates photo

“I love insult, it's always honest.”

Source: Beasts

Karl Marx photo
George Sand photo
Franz Kafka photo
Matt Haig photo
Pablo Neruda photo

Related topics