On n'est heureux que par l'amour.
Letter 155: Le Vicomte de Valmont to le Chevalier Danceny. Trans. P.W.K. Stone (1961). http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Les_Liaisons_dangereuses_-_Lettre_155
Les liaisons dangereuses (1782)
On n'est heureux que par l'amour.
Les Liaisons dangereuses, 1782, Vicomte de Valmont
“There is only one happiness in life, to love and be loved.”
“One seeks to make the loved one entirely happy, or, if that cannot be, entirely wretched.”
L'on veut faire tout le bonheur, ou si cela ne se peut ainsi, tout le malheur de ce qu'on aime.
Aphorism 39
Les Caractères (1688), Du Coeur
Love and Death (1975)
“No one can grant you happiness. Happiness is a choice we all have the power to make.”
Source: Life Expectancy
Leigh-Cheri to Bernard, in Phase III, Ch. 46.
Still Life with Woodpecker (1980)
Context: I’m not quite twenty, but, thanks to you, I’ve learned something that many women these days never learn: Prince Charming really is a toad. And the Beautiful Princess has halitosis. The bottom line is that (a) people are never perfect, but love can be, (b) that is the one and only way that the mediocre and the vile can be transformed, and (c) doing that makes it that. Loving makes love. Loving makes itself. We waste time looking for the perfect lover instead of creating the perfect love. Wouldn’t that be the way to make love stay?
