The Letters of Abélard and Héloïse Quotes

“If the portraits of our absent friends are pleasant to us, which renew our memory of them and relieve our regret for their absence by a false and empty consolation, how much more pleasant are letters which bring us the written characters of the absent friend.”
― Héloïse d'Argenteuil, The Letters of Abélard and Héloïse

“God knows I never sought anything in you except yourself. I wanted simply you, nothing of yours.”
― Heloise, The Letters of Abélard and Héloïse

“[I]t is not by being richer or more powerful that a man becomes better; one is a matter of fortune, the other of virtue. Nor should she deem herself other than venal who weds a rich man rather than a poor, and desires more things in her husband than himself. Assuredly, whomsoever this concupiscence leads into marriage deserves payment rather than affection.”
― Héloïse, The Letters of Abélard and Héloïse

“Against the disease of writing one must take special precautions, since it is a dangerous and contagious disease.”
― Pierre Abélard, The Letters of Abélard and Héloïse

“Would that thy love, beloved, had less trust in me, that it might be more anxious!”
― Héloïse, The Letters of Abélard and Héloïse

“[I]f the name of wife appears more sacred and more valid, sweeter to me is ever the word friend, or, if thou be not ashamed, concubine ... And thou thyself wert not wholly unmindful of that ... [as in the narrative of thy misfortunes] thou hast not disdained to set forth sundry reasons by which I tried to dissuade thee from our marriage, from an ill-starred bed; but wert silent as to many, in which I preferred love to wedlock, freedom to a bond. I call God to witness, if Augustus, ruling over the whole world, were to deem me worthy of the honour of marriage, and to confirm the whole world to me, to be ruled by me forever, dearer to me and of greater dignity would it seem to be called thy concubine than his empress.”
― Héloïse, The Letters of Abélard and Héloïse

“Let me have a faithful account of all that concerns you; I would know everything, be it ever so unfortunate. Perhaps by mingling my sighs with yours I may make your sufferings less, for it is said that all sorrows divided are made lighter.”
― Héloïse d'Argenteuil, The Letters of Abélard and Héloïse

“Love is incapable of being concealed; a word, a look, nay, silence, speaks it.”
― Peter Abelard and Héloïse, Letters of Abelard and Heloise

“If there is anything that may properly be called happiness here below, I am persuaded it is the union of two persons who love each other with perfect liberty, who are united by a secret inclination, and satisfied with each other's merits. Their hearts are full and leave no vacancy for any other passion; they enjoy perpetual tranquillity because they enjoy content.”
― Pierre Abélard, The Letters of Abélard and Héloïse

“Strive now to unite in yourself all the virtues of these different examples. Have the purity of virgins, the austerity of anchorites, the zeal of pastors and bishops, and the constancy of martyrs.”
― Pierre Abélard, The Letters of Abélard and Héloïse

“[A]s though mindful of the wife of Lot, who looked back from behind him, thou deliveredst me first to the sacred garments and monastic profession before thou gavest thyself to God. And for that in this one thing thou shouldst have had little trust in me I vehemently grieved and was ashamed. For I (God [knows]) would without hesitation precede or follow thee to the Vulcanian fires according to thy word. For not with me was my heart, but with thee. But now, more than ever, if it be not with thee, it is nowhere. For without thee it cannot anywhere exist.”
― Héloïse, The Letters of Abélard and Héloïse

“Everyone wishes to be saved, but few will use those means which religion prescribes.”
― Pierre Abélard, The Letters of Abélard and Héloïse

“we are much fonder of the pictures of those we love, when they are at a great distance, than when they are near to us.”
― Héloïse d'Argenteuil, Letters of Abelard and Heloise

“Tis a thousand times more easy to renounce the world than love.”
― Pierre Abélard, The Love Letters of Abelard and Heloise: Annotated and enhanced version with complete biography and quotes

“Jealousy can easily believe the most terrible things.”
― Pierre Abélard, The Love Letters of Abelard and Heloise

“No man’s real worth is measured by his property or power:
fortune belongs to one category of things
and virtue to another.

And no woman should think herself any the less for sale
if she prefers a rich man to a poor one
in marriage and wants what she would get
in a husband more than the husband himself.
Reward such greed with cash and not devotion,
for she is after property alone
and is prepared to prostitute herself
to an even richer man given the chance.”
― Pierre Abélard, Letters of Abélard and Héloïse

“I now lament my lover, and of all my joys have nothing but the painful memory that they are past. Now learn, all you my rivals who once viewed my happiness with jealous eyes, that he you once envied me can never more be mine. I loved him; my love was his crime and the cause of his punishment. My beauty once charmed him; pleased with each other we passed our brightest days in tranquility and happiness. If that were a crime, 'tis a crime I am yet fond of, and I have no other regret save that against my will I must now be innocent.”
― Héloïse d'Argenteuil, The Letters of Abélard and Héloïse

“It is always some consolation in sorrow to feel that it is shared, and any burden laid on several is carried more lightly or removed.”
― Heloise, The Letters of Abelard and Heloise

“We commonly die to the affections of those we see no more, and they to ours; absence is the tomb of love.”
― Pierre Abélard, The Love Letters of Abelard and Heloise

“Perhaps by mingling my sighs with yours I may make your sufferings less, for it is said that all sorrows divided are made lighter.”
― Héloïse d'Argenteuil, The Love Letters of Abelard and Heloise

“You are called a monastic, but think
what that word means. If you are truly alone, then what are you
doing among the crowd of men?”
― Pierre Abélard, The Letters of Abélard and Héloïse

“As a city that lieth
open and is not compassed with walls, so is a man that cannot
restrain his spirit in speech.”
― Pierre Abélard, The Letters of Abélard and Héloïse

“And, finally, about silence—An idle or unnecessary word is the
same thing as excessive speech; hence, Augustine says in the first
book of his
Retractions,
“I cannot call it excessive speech when what
is said is needed, no matter how many words are used.”
12
Solomon
tells us, “In excessive speech sin shall not be wanting, but he that
refraineth his lips is most wise.”
13
Where
sin shall not be wanting,
we
must especially beware and guard against the condition all the more
when it is so dangerous and difficult to avoid. This is what Saint
Benedict did, saying, “Monks should study silence at all times.”
14
Studying silence
is something more than simply
keeping silent,
for
study is the pointed application of the mind to accomplish a given
task. We do many things in negligence or even against our will, but
we cannot
study
a thing without acting with purpose and will
The apostle James, however, tells us how difficult it is to curb the
tongue, but also how beneficial it will be. “We all offend in many
things,” he says,
but if any man offend not in word, then he is a perfect
man. . . . For every nature of beasts and birds and serpents
and the rest is tamed, and hath been tamed, by the nature of
man, but the tongue no man can tame. . . . The tongue is
indeed a small part of the body . . . but see how small a fire
can kindle a great wood. . . . It is a world of iniquity . . . , an
unquiet evil, full of deadly poison.”
― Pierre Abélard, The Letters of Abélard and Héloïse

“I have followed the procedure of the ancient painter
Zeuxis, who worked in a material temple as I propose to work in a
spiritual one. As Cicero tells the story, the people of Croton asked
Zeuxis to decorate a temple they held in high esteem with the finest
paintings he could devise.

He approached the task with care,
selecting five of the town’s most beautiful women to sit beside him
as he worked and model their beauty for his painting. There were
several good reasons for this. Zeuxis, we know, was a master in portraying
women’s beauty, which by nature is more elegant and delicate
than men’s. But as Cicero makes it a point to explain, he chose
several
women because he did not think he could find
one
who was
uniformly lovely in all her parts. Nature, he thought, had never conferred
such beauty on a single woman that all her parts should have
an equal share: nothing composed by nature is complete in all
respects, as if, in bestowing all her bounties in one place, nature
would have none left to bestow elsewhere.
Similarly, in my depiction of the beauty of the soul”
― Pierre Abélard, The Letters of Abélard and Héloïse

“Come too, my inseparable companion, and join me in thanksgiving, you who were made my partner both in guilt and in grace.”
― Peter Abelard, The Letters of Abelard and Heloise

“I have long examined things, and have found that death is less dangerous than beauty.”
― Héloïse d'Argenteuil, The Love Letters of Abelard and Heloise

“Where, then, is the discretion or the reason in loading burdens on the backs of those whose strength has not first been tested to make sure that the tasks assigned to human beings are in line with their natural constitutions? Would anyone give a donkey the same load as an elephant? Or the young or very old the same loads as full adults? Can the frail bear as much as the hardy, or the sickly as much as the well?”
― Pierre Abélard, The Letters and Other Writings: Selected Songs and Poems

“I am convinced by a sad experience that it is natural to avoid those to whom we have been too much obliged, and that uncommon generosity causes neglect rather than gratitude.”
― Héloïse d'Argenteuil, The Love Letters of Abelard and Heloise

“Pleasures tasted sparingly and with difficulty have always a higher relish, whilst everything that is easy and common grows stale and insipid.”
― Héloïse, Letters of Abelard and Heloise

“I have made it an observation since our absence, that we are much fonder of the pictures of those we love when they are at a great distance than when they are near us. It seems to me as if the farther they are removed their pictures grow the more finished, and acquire a greater resemblance; or at least our imagination, which perpetually figures them to us by the desire we have of seeing them again, makes us think so. By a peculiar power, love can make that seem life itself which, as soon as the loved object returns, is nothing but a little canvas and flat color. I have your picture in my room; I never pass it without stopping to look at it; and yet when you are present with me I scarce ever cast my eyes on it. If a picture, which is but a mute representation of an object, can give such pleasure, what cannot letters inspire? They have souls; they can speak; they have in them all that force which expresses the transports of the heart; they have all the fire of our passions, they can raise them as much as if the persons themselves were present; they have all the tenderness and the delicacy of speech, and sometimes even a boldness of expression beyond it.”
― Héloïse d'Argenteuil, The Letters of Abélard and Héloïse