“How many deserters there are from the rigours of virtue, how few from the cause of love!”

—  Antoine François Prévost

Combien trouve-t-on de déserteurs de la sévère vertu et combien en trouvez-vous peu de l'amour?
Part 1, p. 123; translation p. 64.
L'Histoire du chevalier des Grieux et de Manon Lescaut (1731)

Original

Combien trouve-t-on de déserteurs de la sévère vertu et combien en trouvez-vous peu de l'amour?

L'Histoire du chevalier des Grieux et de Manon Lescaut (1731)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "How many deserters there are from the rigours of virtue, how few from the cause of love!" by Antoine François Prévost?
Antoine François Prévost photo
Antoine François Prévost 11
French novelist 1697–1763

Related quotes

Henry Van Dyke photo

“How often a man has cause to return thanks for the enthusiasms of his friends! They are the little fountains that run down from the hills to refresh the mental desert of the despondent.”

Henry Van Dyke (1852–1933) American diplomat

The White Blot
The Ruling Passion http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext97/rlpsn10.txt (1901)

Kate DiCamillo photo

“This is the danger of loving: No matter how powerful you are, no matter how many kingdoms you rule, you cannot stop those you love from dying.”

Kate DiCamillo book The Tale of Despereaux

Source: The Tale of Despereaux

Noel Coward photo

“It's discouraging to think how many people are shocked by honesty and how few by deceit.”

Noel Coward Blithe Spirit

Source: Blithe Spirit

George Eliot photo

“How is it that the poets have said so many fine things about our first love, so few about our later love? Are their first poems their best? Or are not those the best which come from their fuller thought, their larger experience, their deeper-rooted affections?”

George Eliot book Adam Bede

Adam Bede (1859)

Pythagoras photo

“You will know that wretched men are the cause of their own suffering, who neither see nor hear the good that is near them, and few are the ones who know how to secure release from their troubles.”

Pythagoras (-585–-495 BC) ancient Greek mathematician and philosopher

As quoted in Divine Harmony: The Life and Teachings of Pythagoras by John Strohmeier and Peter Westbrook (1999)
The Golden Verses
Context: You will know that wretched men are the cause of their own suffering, who neither see nor hear the good that is near them, and few are the ones who know how to secure release from their troubles. Such is the fate that harms their minds; like pebbles they are tossed about from one thing to another with cares unceasing. For the dread companion Strife harms them unawares, whom one must not walk behind, but withdraw from and flee.

“How did thinking that benefited the few gain the acceptance of the many?”

Herbert Schiller (1919–2000) American media critic

Source: Living In The Number One Country (2000), Chapter Four, Communication Theorists Of Empire, p. 108

Jane Taylor photo

“Though man a thinking being is defined,
Few use the grand prerogative of mind.
How few think justly of the thinking few!
How many never think, who think they do!”

Jane Taylor (1783–1824) British poet

"Essays in Rhyme" from On Morals and Manners, Prejudice, Essay i. Stanza 45, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Richard Nixon photo

“I didn’t notice many Jewish names coming back from Vietnam on any of those lists; I don’t know how the hell they avoid it. If you look at the Canadian-Swedish contingent, they were very disproportionately Jewish. The deserters”

Richard Nixon (1913–1994) 37th President of the United States of America

Conversation with Mr. Colson, on tapes recorded February-March 1973 http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/flash/national/20101211_NIXON_AUDIO/3_VIETNAM.mp3; as quoted in "In Tapes, Nixon Rails About Jews and Blacks" http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/11/us/politics/11nixon.html, by Adam Nagourney,New York Times (10 December 2010)
1970s

Marcus Aurelius photo

“Let there be freedom from perturbations with respect to the things which come from the external cause; and let there be justice in the things done by virtue of the internal cause”

Marcus Aurelius book Meditations

IX, 31
Meditations (c. 121–180 AD), Book IX
Context: Let there be freedom from perturbations with respect to the things which come from the external cause; and let there be justice in the things done by virtue of the internal cause, that is, let there be movement and action terminating in this, in social acts, for this is according to thy nature.

Thorstein Veblen photo

“Any evolutionary science… is a close-knit body of theory. It is a theory of a process, of an unfolding sequence… of cumulative causation. The great deserts of the evolutionist leaders… lie… in their having shown how this colorless impersonal sequence of cause and effect can be made use of for theory proper, by virtue of its cumulative character.”

Thorstein Veblen (1857–1929) American academic

Source: "Why is economics not an evolutionary science?", 1898, pp. 375-378; As cited in: Geoffrey M. Hodgson, "Veblen and darwinism." International review of sociology 14.3 (2004): 343-361

Related topics