Top 50 Ninon de L'Enclos Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “That which is striking and beautiful is not always good, but that which is good is always beautiful.”

— Ninon de L'Enclos

Featured in: Beauty Quotes

2. “Beauty without grace is a hook without a bait.”

— Ninon de L'Enclos

Featured in: Beauty Quotes

3. “Firmness is great; persistency is greater.”

— Ninon de L'Enclos

4. “If a man needs a religion to conduct himself properly in this world, it is a sign that he has either a limited mind or a corrupt heart.”

— Ninon de L'Enclos

5. “The joy of the mind is the measure of its strength.”

— Ninon de L'Enclos

6. “The resistance of a woman is not always a proof of her virtue, but more frequently of her experience.”

— Ninon de L'Enclos

7. “A cunning woman is her own mistress because she confides in no one. She who deceives others anticipates deceit, and guards herself.”

— Ninon de L'Enclos

8. “Today a new sun rises for me; everything lives, everything is animated, everything seems to speak to me of my passion, everything invites me to cherish it.”

— Ninon de L'Enclos

9. “Love without desire is a delusion: it does not exist in nature.”

— Ninon de L'Enclos

10. “It is strange that modesty is the rule for women when what they most value in men is boldness.”

— Ninon de L'Enclos

11. “Men lose more conquests by their own awkwardness than by any virtue in the woman.”

— Ninon de L'Enclos

12. “There are no perfect women in the world; only hypocrites exhibit no defects.”

— Ninon de L'Enclos

13. “Feminine virtue is nothing but a convenient masculine invention.”

— Ninon de L'Enclos

14. “The secret known to two is no longer a secret.”

— Ninon de L'Enclos

15. “A sensible woman should be guided by her head when taking a husband, and by her heart when taking a lover.”

— Ninon de L'Enclos

16. “It requires infinitely a greater genius to make love, than to make war.”

— Ninon de L'Enclos

17. “Ennui, the parent of expensive and ruinous vices.”

— Ninon de L'Enclos

18. “Gentleness! more powerful than Hercules.”

— Ninon de L'Enclos

19. “I hold those wise who know how to be happy.”

— Ninon de L'Enclos

20. “It takes a hundred times more skill to make love than to command an army.”

— Ninon de L'Enclos

21. “Soft moonlight and tender love harmonize together wonderfully.”

— Ninon de L'Enclos

22. “Glances are the first billets-doux of love.”

— Ninon de L'Enclos

23. “Novelty is the storehouse of pleasure.”

— Ninon de L'Enclos

24. “The more sins you confess, the more books you will sell.”

— Ninon de L'Enclos

25. “One must choose between loving women and knowing them.”

— Ninon de L'Enclos

26. “The passions do not die out; they burn out.”

— Ninon de L'Enclos

27. “Love never dies of starvation, but often of indigestion.”

— Ninon de L'Enclos

28. “Much more genius is needed to make love than to command armies.”

— Ninon de L'Enclos

29. “Fair is not fair, but that which pleaseth.”

— Ninon de L'Enclos

30. “Old age is women’s hell.”

— Ninon de L'Enclos

31. “We should lay in a store of food, but never of pleasures; these should be gathered day by day.”

— Ninon de L'Enclos

32. “Never tell a loved one of an infidelity: you would be badly rewarded for your troubles. Although one dislikes being deceived, one likes even less to be undeceived.”

— Ninon de L'Enclos

33. “Oaths are the counterfeit money with which we pay the sacrifice of love.”

— Ninon de L'Enclos

34. “Inconstancy is the child of satiety.”

— Ninon de L'Enclos

35. “Wit is a dangerous talent in friendship.”

— Ninon de L'Enclos

36. “A woman should not take a lover without the consent of her heart, nor a husband without the consent of her reason.”

— Ninon de L'Enclos

37. “Words really flattering are not those which we prepare but those which escape us unthinkingly.”

— Ninon de L'Enclos

38. “It is not enough to be wise, one must be engaging.”

— Ninon de L'Enclos

39. “A woman is more influenced by what she divines than by what she is told.”

— Ninon de L'Enclos

40. “The loss of friends is a tax on age!”

— Ninon de L'Enclos

41. “Actors ought to be larger than life. You come across quite enough ordinary, nondescript people in daily life and I don’t see why you should be subjected to them on the stage too.”

— Ninon de L'Enclos

42. “I have always sworn to my lovers to love them eternally, but for me eternity is a quarter of an hour.”

— Ninon de L'Enclos

43. “When our desires are fulfilled, we never fail to realize the wealth of imagination and the paucity of reality.”

— Ninon de L'Enclos

44. “There is always a moment in the pyramid of our lives when the apex is reached.”

— Ninon de L'Enclos

45. “If God had to give a woman wrinkles, He might at least have put them on the soles of her feet.”

— Ninon de L'Enclos

46. “Hatred is nearly always honest – rarely, if ever, assumed. So much cannot be said for love.”

— Ninon de L'Enclos

47. “Friendship should be in the singular; it can be no more plural than love.”

— Ninon de L'Enclos

48. “After the age of eighty, all contemporaries are friends.”

— Ninon de L'Enclos

49. “Who has not raised a tombstone, here and there, over buried hopes and dead joys, on the road of life? Like the scars of the heart, they are not to be obliterated.”

— Ninon de L'Enclos

50. “Memory is ever active, ever true. Alas, if it were only as easy to forget!”

— Ninon de L'Enclos