Libertine Quotes

• Do not, as some ungracious pastors do, Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven; Whilst, like a puff'd and reckless libertine, Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads And recks not his own read.

  William Shakespeare

  Heaven, Puff, Hamlet And Ophelia

  'Hamlet' (1601) act 1, sc. 3, l. 47

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• It is easier to make a saint out of a libertine than out of a prig.

  George Santayana

  Saint, Saints And Sinners, Easier

  George Santayana (2009). “The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress”, p.763, The Floating Press

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• any experiment of interest in life will be carried out at your own expense

  John Wilmot

  Interest In Life, Expenses, Experiments

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• You must acquire the trick of ignoring those who do not like you. In my experience, those who do not like you fall into two categories: the stupid, and the envious. The stupid will like you in five years time, the envious never.

  Stephen Jeffreys

  Stupid, Fall, Years

  "The Libertine". www.imdb.com. 2004.

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• The theatre is my drug. And my illness is so far advanced that my physic must be of the highest quality.

  John Wilmot

  Drug, Theatre, Quality

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• I shall never forgive you for teaching me how to love life.

  John Wilmot

  Teaching, Love Life, Forgiving

  "Fictional character: Rochester". "The Libertine", www.imdb.com. 2004.

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• I wish to be moved. I cannot feel in life. I must have others do it for me in theater.

  John Wilmot

  Wish, Theater, Feels

  "Fictional character: Rochester". "The Libertine", www.imdb.com. 2004.

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• All men would be cowards if they only had the courage.

  Johnny Depp

  Men, Coward, Would Be

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• The most curious social convention of the great age in which we live is the one to the effect that religious opinions should be respected.

  H. L. Mencken

  Religious, Religion, Atheism

  H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.80, Vintage

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• ... the atheists, libertines, despisers of religion ... that is to say all those who usually pass under the name of Free-thinkers.

  Jonathan Swift

  Atheist, Names, Atheism

  Jonathan Swift, John Hawkesworth (1755). “The Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D. Dean of St. Patrick's, Dublin: Accurately Revised in Six Volumes, Adorned with Copper-plates : with Some Account of the Author's Life and Notes Historical and Explanatory”, p.56

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• If you are a libertine, if you're not given to long-term faithful relationships, you tend to project your behavior onto everyone else. It's like the person who knows they're not trustworthy; they tend to mistrust everyone else.

  Ben Kingsley

  Long, Faithful, Trustworthy

  Interview with Scott Tobias, www.avclub.com. August 6, 2008.

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• There comes a time when you have to stand up and be counted.

  Gale Sayers

  Moving Up, Pages Turning, Nfl

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• I'm a libertine, but it's not my specialty.

  Primo Levi

  Specialty

  Primo Levi (1987). “The Wrench”

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• Sedition is bred in the lap of luxury and its chosen emissaries are the beggared spendthrift and the impoverished libertine.

  George Bancroft

  Luxury, Lap, Chosen

  George Bancroft (1855). “Literary and historical miscellanies”, p.424

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• A man without an address is a vagabond; a man with two addresses is a libertine.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Men, Two, Vagabonds

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• ...and the red sun of desire and decision (the two things that create a live world) rose higher and higher, while upon a succession of balconies a succession of libertines, sparkling glass in hand, toasted the bliss of past and future nights.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Past, Night, Glasses

  Vladimir Nabokov (2016). “Lolita”, p.38, Hamilton Books

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• It is one of those problems of human nature, which may be noted down, but not solved; - although Ralph felt no remorse at that moment for his conduct towards the innocent, true-hearted girl; although his libertine clients had done precisely what he had expected, precisely what he most wished, and precisely what would tend most to his advantage, still he hated them for doing it, from the very bottom of his soul.

  Charles Dickens

  Girl, Character, Interesting

  Charles Dickens (1854). “The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby ... With a Frontispiece from a Painting by T. Webster”, p.223

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• But, you never know when The Libertines is going to come along.

  Carl Barat

  Knows

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• If a woman knows a man to be a libertine, yet will, without scruple, give him her company, he will think half the ceremony between them is over; and will probably only want an opportunity to make her repent of her confidence in him.

  Samuel Richardson

  Opportunity, Men, Thinking

  Samuel Richardson (1755). “A collection of the moral and instructive sentiments, maxims, cautions, and reflexions, contained in the histories of Pamela, Clarissa, and Sir Charles Grandison: Digested under proper heads, with references to the volume, ...”, p.4

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• For every bourgeois, in the heat of youth, if only for a day, for a minute, has believed himself capable of immense passions, of heroic enterprises. The most mediocre libertine has dreamed of oriental princesses; every rotary carries about inside him the debris of a poet.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Princess, Passion, Rotary

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• I'd describe myself as a sexual libertarian - but I'm not a libertine. "To each his own" is my motto.

  Madalyn Murray O'Hair

  Libertarian, Motto, Describe Myself

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• In the most rigorous [Roman] laws, a wife was condemned to support a gamester, a drunkard, or a libertine, unless he were guilty of homicide, poison, or sacrilege, in which cases the marriage, as it should seem, might have been dissolved by the hand of the executioner.

  Edward Gibbon

  Law, Hands, Wife

  Edward Gibbon, Henry Hart Milman, Guizot (M., François), Sir William Smith (1862). “The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”, p.298

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• Katherine Sedley was the only daughter and heiress to the libertine poet Sir Charles Sedley, and grew into a thoroughly scandalous lady in her own right.

  Susan Holloway Scott

  Daughter, Poet, Heiress

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• The wickedness of a loose or profane author is more atrocious than that of a giddy libertine or drunken ravisher, not only because it extends its effects wider, as a pestilence that taints the air is more destructive than poison infused in a draught, but because it is committed with cool deliberation.

  Samuel Johnson

  Writing, Air, Poison

  Samuel Johnson (1761). “The Rambler: In Four Volumes”, p.123

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• She smiled at him, though her hazel-green eyes were wary beneath the brim of a sodden hat. Right at that moment, staring at her across the hall, Gideon Shaw, cynic, hedonist, drunkard, libertine, fell hopelessly in love.

  Lisa Kleypas

  Eye, Gideon, Green

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