Quotes and Images From Memoirs of Madame De Montespan   By: Françoise-Athénaïs de Rochechouart de Mortemart Montespan (1641-1707)

THE MEMOIRS OF MADAME DE MONTESPAN

By Madame de Montespan

All the death in life of a convent

Always sold at a loss which must be sold at a given moment

Ambition puts a thick bandage over the eyes

And then he would go off, laughing in his sleeve

Armed with beauty and sarcasm

Cannot reconcile themselves to what exists

Conduct of the sort which cements and revives attachments

Console me on the morrow for what had troubled me to day

Cuddlings and caresses of decrepitude

Depicting other figures she really portrays her own

Domestics included two nurses, a waiting maid, a physician

Extravagant, without the means to be so

Grow like a dilapidated house; I am only here to repair myself

Happy with him as a woman who takes her husband's place can be

Hate me, but fear me

He contradicted me about trifles

He was not fool enough for his place

I myself being the first to make merry at it (my plainness)

In the great world, a vague promise is the same as a refusal

In Rome justice and religion always rank second to politics

In ill assorted unions, good sense or good nature must intervene

In England a man is the absolute proprietor of his wife

Intimacy, once broken, cannot be renewed