Love Quote by Sacha Guitry

Better to love than to be loved? Guitry answers with the cold assurance of a man who has watched affection behave like weather: it changes, it drifts, it gets blamed for ruining the weekend. "It is surer" is the snap of a trap closing. He takes what sounds like a romantic riddle and resolves it like a tactician, not a poet. Love, in this framing, isn’t a halo you receive; it’s a decision you author. Being loved depends on someone else’s appetite, their vanity, their boredom, the arrival of a newer face across the room. Loving, at least, is yours.

That’s the subtext: control disguised as tenderness. Guitry, a boulevard playwright and director steeped in sophisticated comedy, understood the stagecraft of desire: the person who loves is doing something, performing, choosing lines and cues. The person who is loved is waiting for reviews. "Surer" doesn’t mean morally superior; it means more reliable as a private possession. Even unreturned love can be nursed, rationalized, turned into identity. Being loved can evaporate without your consent.

The context matters because Guitry’s era adored romance as spectacle while privately negotiating its fragility. His own famously turbulent relationships feed the cynicism: this is a man who knew that admiration is fickle and intimacy is a power exchange. The wit works because it punctures sentimental hierarchy (being loved as the prize) and replaces it with a modern, slightly defensive truth: the safest feeling is the one you generate yourself.