Literary Birthday – 22 December – Jean Racine

Jean Racine was born 22 December 1639, and died 21 April 1699.

Six Quotes

1. Justice in the extreme is often unjust.
2. Small crimes always precede great crimes. Whoever has been able to transgress the limits set by law may afterwards violate the most sacred rights; crime, like virtue, has its degrees, and never have we seen timid innocence pass suddenly to extreme licentiousness.
3. There are no secrets that time does not reveal.
4. Love is not a fire to be shut up in a soul. Everything betrays us: voice, silence, eyes; half-covered fires burn all the brighter.
5. The principal rule of art is to please and to move. All the other rules were created to achieve this first one.
6. A tragedy need not have blood and death; it’s enough that it all be filled with that majestic sadness that is the pleasure of tragedy.

Jean Racine was a French dramatist. He was one of the three great playwrights of 17th-century France, with Molière and Corneille, and an important literary figure in the Western tradition.

Source for Image

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Portrait_de_Jean_Racine_d%27apr%C3%A8s_Jean-Baptiste_Santerre.jpg

After Jean-Baptiste Santerre, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

by Amanda Patterson

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