Reflections on Various Subjects (1665–1678), VII. On Air and Manner
Context: There is an air which belongs to the figure and talents of each individual; we always lose it when we abandon it to assume another. We should try to find out what air is natural to us and never abandon it, but make it as perfect as we can. This is the reason that the majority of children please. It is because they are wrapt up in the air and manner nature has given them, and are ignorant of any other. They are changed and corrupted when they quit infancy, they think they should imitate what they see, and they are not altogether able to imitate it. In this imitation there is always something of falsity and uncertainty. They have nothing settled in their manner and opinions. Instead of being in reality what they want to appear, they seek to appear what they are not.
“We spoil the dispositions nature has given to women; we neglect their education, fill their minds with nothing solid, and destine them solely to please, and to please only by their graces or their vices.”
Wiki translation based on that of Amelia Gere Mason, The Women of the French Salons; New York: The Century Co., 1891. p. 142.
New Reflections on Women, 1727
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Anne-Thérèse de Marguenat de Courcelles, marquise de Lambert 23
writer from France 1647–1733Related quotes
Discourse no. 13; vol. 2, p. 136.
Discourses on Art
“The Creator made women to please the eye and trouble the mind.”
Two Rivers saying
(15 October 1993)
Source: The Wheel of Time: Boxed Set
Source: Galateo: Or, A Treatise on Politeness and Delicacy of Manners, pp. 14-15
Note to Stanza 27
Spiritual Canticle of The Soul and The Bridegroom, Notes to the Stanzas
Context: I have said that God is pleased with nothing but love; but before I explain this, it will be as well to set forth the grounds on which the assertion rests. All our works, and all our labours, how grand soever they may be, are nothing in the sight of God, for we can give Him nothing, neither can we by them fulfil His desire, which is the growth of our soul. As to Himself He desires nothing of this, for He has need of nothing, and so, if He is pleased with anything it is with the growth of the soul; and as there is no way in which the soul can grow but in becoming in a manner equal to Him, for this reason only is He pleased with our love. It is the property of love to place him who loves on an equality with the object of his love. Hence the soul, because of its perfect love, is called the bride of the Son of God, which signifies equality with Him. In this equality and friendship all things are common, as the Bridegroom Himself said to His disciples: I have called you friends, because all things, whatsoever I have heard of my Father, I have made known to you.
“This endeavour to do a thing or leave it undone, solely in order to please men, we call ambition, especially when we so eagerly endeavour to please the vulgar, that we do or omit certain things to our own or another's hurt : in other cases it is generally called kindliness.”
Hic conatus aliquid agendi et etiam omittendi ea sola de causa ut hominibus placeamus, vocatur ambitio præsertim quando adeo impense vulgo placere conamur ut cum nostro aut alterius damno quædam agamus vel omittamus; alias humanitas appellari solet.
Part III, Prop. XXIX
Ethics (1677)
“Nature has given women so much power that the law has very wisely given them little.”
Letter from Johnson to John Taylor, 18 August 1763. The Yale Book of Quotations edited by Fred R. Shapiro, pg 400.