Jean-François Regnard

Jean-François Regnard (7 February 1655 – 4 September 1709) was a French dramatist, born in Paris, who is equally famous now for the travel diary he kept of a voyage in 1681.

Allons, saute Marquis!
Come, Marquis, jump for joy!

Quotes

• C'est dans les grands dangers qu'on voit les grands courages.
  • It is in great dangers that we see great courage.
  • Le Légataire universel (1708), act 4, sc. 1 — Erste (tr. Ramage, 1880)

Le Joueur (1696)

• Près du sexe tu vins, tu vis, et tu vainquis:
  Que ton sort est heureux! Allons, saute Marquis!
  • You come near the sex, see, and conquer—my boy!
    You're the luckiest of mortals! Jump, marquis, for joy!
  • (The soi-disant Marquis's self-congratulatory soliloquy)
  • act 4, sc. 10 — The Marquis (tr. King, 1904)

• C'est posséder les biens que savoir s'en passer.
  • To be able to dispense with good things is tantamount to possessing them.
  • (Hector, the valet, reading Seneca to his master, Valére)
  • act 4, sc. 13 — Hector (tr. King, 1904)

• Qu’un joueur est heureux! sa poche est un trésor!
  Sous ses heureuses mains le cuivre devient or.
  • How happy is a gambler! his pocket is a treasure! under his lucky hands brass becomes gold.
  • act 4, sc. 13 — Hector (tr. Ramage, 1880)

Les Folies Amoureuses (1704)

One loves without reason, and without reason one hates.

• On aime sans raison et sans raison l'on hait.
  • One loves without reason, and without reason one hates.
  • act 2, sc. 2 — Agathe to Albert (tr. King, 1904)
  • Cf. Catullus, Carmina, no. 85

• Hippocrate dit oui, mais Galien dit non.
  • Hippocrate says Yes, but Galienus says No.
  • (Erastus's valet, Crispin, posing for the nonce as a man of science, undertakes to explain the cause of Agatha's pretended madness)
  • act 3, sc. 7 — Crispin (tr. King, 1904)

External links

• C. T. Ramage (ed.) Beautiful Thoughts from French and Italian Authors, 3rd ed. (Liverpool: Edward Howell, 1880), p. 275
• W. F. H. King (ed.) Classical and Foreign Quotations, 3rd ed. (London: J. Whitaker & Sons, Ltd., 1904), nos. 89, 299, 917, 1860
• T. B. Harbottle and P. H. Dalbiac (eds.) Dictionary of Quotations: French and Italian, 2nd ed. (London: Swan Sonnenschein & Co., Ltd., 1904), pp. 2, 7, 15, 79, 80, 87, 109, 128, 139, 167, 184, 205, 210, 216