Prosper Jolyot de Crébillon

Prosper Jolyot de Crébillon (13 January 1674 – 17 June 1762) was a French poet and tragedian. He is sometimes known as Crébillon père or Crébillon le Tragique to distinguish him from his son Claude Prosper Jolyot de Crébillon (Crébillon the Gay).

Quotes

• Le cœur des malheureux n'est qu'un trop sûr oracle.
  • The suffering heart is surest oracle.
  • Atrèe et Thyeste, Act V, Sc. I (Plisthène), as reported by Harbottle (1904), p. 124

• II faut un terms au crime, et non à la vengeance.
  • 'Tis crime that must be ended, and not vengeance.
  • Atrée et Thyeste, Act V, Sc. IV (Atrée), as reported by Harbottle (1904), p. 63

• Ainsi que le heros brille par ses exploits,
  La grandeur des bienfaits doit signaler les rois.
  • As all the world the hero's exploits sings,
    So should good deeds the glory be of kings.
  • Electre, Act II, Sc. IV (Egisthe), as reported by Harbottle (1904), p. 6

• Le crime est toujours crime, et jamais la beauté
  N'a pu servir de voile à sa difformité.
  • Crime is aye crime, and beauty ne'er can be
    A veil to cover its deformity.
  • Pyrrhus, Act IV, Sc. IV (Pyrrhus), as reported by Harbottle (1904), p. 125

• Je connais la fureur de tes soupçons jaloux,
  Mais j'ai trop de vertu pour craindre mon époux.
  • I know the fury of your jealous suspicions,
    But I have too much virtue to fear my husband.
  • Rhadamiste et Zénobie, Act IV, Sc. V (Zénobie), via Google Translate (July 2024)

• A la cour d’un tyran, injuste ou légitime,
  Le plus léger soupçon tint toujours lieu de crime;
  Et cest être proscrit que d’être soupçonné.
  • At the court of a tyrant, whether usurped or legitimate, the least suspicion always amounts to crime, and to be suspected is to be proscribed.
  • Rhadamiste et Zénobie, Act V, Sc. II (Arsame), as reported by King (1904), no. 71

• On n'est point criminel pour être ambitieux.
  • One is not criminal because ambitious.
  • Sémiramus, Act III, Sc. II (Bélus), as reported by Harbottle (1904), p. 169

• La crainte fit les dieux, l'audace a fait les rois.
  • Fear made our gods, boldness has made our kings.
  • Xerxès, Act I, Sc. I (Artaban), reported by Harbottle (1904), p. 103; also reported by King (1904), no. 2149: "Fear made the gods, audacity made kings."
  • Cp. Petronius, Fragment 27, from whom it was borrowed verbatim by Statius, Thebaid, III, 661: Primus in orbe deos fecit timor.—"It was fear first made the gods."

• La parole des rois n'est plus qu'une ombre vaine.
  • The word of kings is but an empty shadow.
  • Xerxès, Act I, Sc. VIII (Amestris), as reported by Harbottle (1904), p. 112

• L'innocence a toujours confondu l'imposture.
  • By innocence imposture's aye confounded.
  • Xerxès, Act IV, Sc. VII (Amestris), as reported by Harbottle (1904), p. 98

• Aucun fiel n’a jamais empoisonné ma plume.
  • My pen was never dipped in gall.
  • Discours de réception à l’Académie Française (1731), as reported by King (1904), no. 1745; also reported by Hoyt (1922), p. 48: "No gall has ever poisoned my pen."
  • Cp. Ovid, Tristia, II, 563:

    Non ego mordaci destrinxi carmine quenquam,
      Nec meus ullius crimina versus habet.
    Candidus a salibus suffusis felle refugi:
      Nulla venenato littera mixta joco est.

    I never wounded soul with verse of mine,
      Nor do my works a single charge contain:
    My pen is free of gall, and not a line
      Breathes poison, tho’ conveyed in joking strain.

External links

• T. B. Harbottle; P. H. Dalbiac, Dictionary of Quotations: French and Italian (1904)
• W. F. H. King, Classical and Foreign Quotations, 3rd ed. (1904)
• Hoyt's New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations (1922)