Thomas Corneille

Thomas Corneille (20 August 1625 – 8 December 1709) was a French lexicographer and dramatist.

Quotes

• Quoi qu’en dise Aristote et sa docte cabale,
  Le tabac est divin, il n’est rien qui n’égale.
  • For all Aristotle may state au contraire,
    Tobacco’s divine; nought with it can compare.
  • Festin de Pierre, Act I, Sc. 1 — King (1904), no. 2354
  • Thomas Corneille’s comedy is a versification of the prose of Moliere’s play of the same name, which opens with (Sganarelle to Guzman), Quoi que puisse dire Aristote et toute la philosophie, il n’est rien d’égal au tabac.—"Whatever Aristotle and all the philosophers may say, nothing can be compared to tobacco."

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.
  • 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)