Memorable Quotes

Marquise de Merteuil: You'll find the shame is like the pain, you only feel it once.

Vicomte de Valmont: I promised her my eternal love, and I actually thought that for a couple of hours.

Marquise de Merteuil: Like most intellectuals, he's intensely stupid.

Marquise de Merteuil: When it comes to the marriage, one man is as good as the next. And even the least accomodating is less trouble than a mother.

Marquise de Merteuil: When I came out into society I was 15. I already knew then that the role I was condemned to, namely to keep quiet and do what I was told, gave me the perfect opportunity to listen and observe. Not to what people told me, which naturally was of no interest to me, but to whatever it was they were trying to hide. I practiced detachment. I learn how to look cheerful while under the table I stuck a fork onto the back of my hand. I became a virtuoso of deceit. I consulted the strictest moralists to learn how to appear, philosophers to find out what to think, and novelists to see what I could get away with, and in the end it all came down to one wonderfully simple principle: win or die.