Charles Maurice de Talleyrand Quotes

A clever woman often compromises her husband; a stupid woman only compromises herself.

There are many people who have the gift, or failing, of never understanding themselves. I have been unlucky enough, or perhaps fortunate enough to have received the opposite gift.

Speech was given to man to disguise his thoughts.

I am more afraid of an army of 100 sheep led by a lion than an army of 100 lions led by a sheep.

Since the masses are always eager to believe something, for their benefit nothing is so easy to arrange as facts.

Too much sensibility creates unhappiness and too much insensibility creates crime.

Mistrust first impulses; they are nearly always good.

The art of statesmanship is to foresee the inevitable and to expedite its occurrence.

I found there a country with thirty-two religions and only one sauce.

Love of glory can only create a great hero; contempt of glory creates a great man.

God gave humans language so they could conceal their thoughts from one another.

An important art of politicians is to find new names for institutions which under old names have become odious to the public.

Only a man who has loved a woman of genius can appreciate what happiness there is in loving a fool.

Without freedom of the press, there can be no representative government.

Whoever did not live in the years neighboring 1789 does not know what the pleasure of living means.
[Fr., Qui n’a pas vecu dans les annees voisines de 1789 ne sait pas ce que c’est le palisir de vivre.]

If we go on explaining we shall cease to understand one another.

The bold defiance of a woman is the certain sign of her shame, – when she has once ceased to blush, it is because she has too much to blush for.

The reputation of a man is like his shadow, gigantic when it precedes him, and pigmy in its proportions when it follows.

A court is an assembly of noble and distinguished beggars.

A woman will sometimes forgive the man who tries to seduce her, but never the man who misses an opportunity when offered.

Society is divided into two classes: the shearers and the shorn. We should always be with the former against the latter.

The art of putting the right men in the right places is first in the science of government; but that of finding places for the discontented is the most difficult.