Roger de Bussy-Rabutin

Roger de Rabutin, comte de Bussy (13 April 1618 – 9 April 1693), commonly known as Bussy-Rabutin, was a French memoirist. He was the cousin and frequent correspondent of Madame de Sévigné.

Quotes

• Dieu est d'ordinaire pour les gros escadrons contre les petits.
  • As a rule God is on the side of the big squadrons as against the small ones.
  • Lettre au Comte de Limoges (18 October 1677); Correspondances, ed. Lalanne (Paris, 1858), vol. 3, p. 393, Letter 1196 — as reported by King (1904), no. 470
  • Cp. Tacitus, Histories, IV, 17: Deos fortioribus adesse.—"The gods are on the side of the strongest." Voltaire, in his Epistle à M. le Riche (6 February 1770) writtes: Le nombre des sages sera toujours petit. Il est vrai qu'il est augmenté; mais ce n’est rien en comparaison des sots, et par malheur on dit que Dieu est toujours pour les gros bataillons.—"The number of the wise will be always small. It is true that it has been largely increased; but it is nothing in comparison with the number of fools, and unfortunately they say that God always favours the heaviest battalions."

• L'absence est à l'amour ce qu'est au feu le vent;
  Il éteint le petit, il allume le grand.
  • Absence acts upon Love as wind acts upon fire;
    It quenches the faint, makes the ardent burn higher.
  • Histoire amoureuse des Gaules (1665); "Maximes d’Amour" in Amours des Dames (Cologne, 1717), p. 219 — as reported by King (1904), no. 1224

Misattributed

• Quand on n'a pas ce que l'on aime,
  Il faut aimer ce que l'on a.
  • When you have not what you love, you must fain love what you have.
  • Thomas Corneille, L’Inconnu (ed. 1703), Nouveau Prologue (spoken by Crispin). Edouard Fournier, L'Esprit des Autres, 6th ed. (1881), pp. 192–3, observes that Bussy de Rabutin had quoted the lines nearly forty years before in writing to Mme. de Sévigné (23 May 1667), and their authorship is unknown. — King (1904), no. 2208

External links

• W. F. H. King, Classical and Foreign Quotations, 3rd ed. (1904)