“The pleasures and the cares of the luckiest ambition, even of limitless power, are nothing next to the intimate happiness that tenderness and love give.”
Source: La Chartreuse de Parme (The Charterhouse of Parma) (1839), Ch. 7
Context: The pleasures and the cares of the luckiest ambition, even of limitless power, are nothing next to the intimate happiness that tenderness and love give. I am a man before being a prince, and when I have the good fortune to be in love my mistress addresses a man and not a prince.
Original
Les plaisirs et les soins de l'ambition la plus heureuse, même du pouvoir sans bornes, ne sont rien auprès du bonheur intime que donnent les relations de tendresse et d'amour. Je suis homme avant d'être prince, et, quand j'ai le bonheur d'aimer, ma maîtresse s'adresse à l'homme et non au prince.
La Chartreuse de Parme (The Charterhouse of Parma) (1839)
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Stendhal 50
French writer 1783–1842Related quotes
“But his ambition is limitless. He dares to do what men and women don't even dare to think.”
Thorold, in Ch. 2 : The Witches
His Dark Materials, The Subtle Knife (1997)
Context: Lord Asriel is just a man, with human power, no more than that. But his ambition is limitless. He dares to do what men and women don't even dare to think.
Variant: Because I knew even then how rare that kind of love is. Only the luckiest people get to experience it at all.
Source: The Best of Me
Original: (de) Gab mir die Mutter Muth,
nicht mag ich ihr doch danken,
daß deiner List sie erlag:
frühalt, fahl und bleich,
hass' ich die Frohen,
freue mich nie!
Source: Quotes from his operas, Götterdämmerung, Hagen, Act 2, Scene 1
“One of the luckiest things that can happen to you in life is to have a happy childhood.”
“TO LOVE is to find pleasure in the happiness of others.”
"A Dialogue" (after 1695), as quoted in The Shorter Leibniz Texts (2006) http://books.google.com/books?id=oFoCY3xJ8nkC&dq edited by Lloyd H. Strickland, p. 170
Context: TO LOVE is to find pleasure in the happiness of others. Thus the habit of loving someone is nothing other than BENEVOLENCE by which we want the good of others, not for the profit that we gain from it, but because it is agreeable to us in itself.
CHARITY is a general benevolence. And JUSTICE is charity in accordance with wisdom. … so that one does not do harm to someone without necessity, and that one does as much good as one can, but especially where it is best employed.
1920s, Viereck interview (1929)