Author Name: Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Jealousy is bred in doubts. When those doubts change into certainties, then the passion either ceases or turns absolute madness.

We have no patience with other people's vanity because it is offensive to our own.

Passion makes idiots of the cleverest men, and makes the biggest idiots clever.

It is not in the power of even the most crafty dissimulation to conceal love long, where it really is, nor to counterfeit it long where it is not.

What men have called friendship is only a social arrangement, a mutual adjustment of interests, an interchange of services given and received it is, in sum, simply a business from which those involved propose to derive a steady profit for their own self-love.

Being a blockhead is sometimes the best security against being cheated by a man of wit.

Philosophy finds it an easy matter to vanquish past and future evils, but the present are commonly too hard for it.

What makes the pain we feel from shame and jealousy so cutting is that vanity can give us no assistance in bearing them.

A true friend is the greatest of all blessings, and that which we take the least care of all to acquire.

Only the contemptible fear contempt.

Few people have the wisdom to prefer the criticism that would do them good, to the praise that deceives them.

If we are to judge of love by its consequences, it more nearly resembles hatred than friendship.

In friendship as well as love, ignorance very often contributes more to our happiness than knowledge.

We may sooner be brought to love them that hate us, than them that love us more than we would have them do.

In friendship as well as love, ignorance very often contributes more to our happiness than knowledge.

Men often pass from love to ambition, but they seldom come back again from ambition to love.

We always love those who admire us, but we do not always love those whom we admire.

Jealousy contains more of self-love than of love.

Though nature be ever so generous, yet can she not make a hero alone. Fortune must contribute her part too and till both concur, the work cannot be perfected.

In the misfortunes of our best friends we always find something not altogether displeasing to us.

Though nature be ever so generous, yet can she not make a hero alone. Fortune must contribute her part too and till both concur, the work cannot be perfected.

If we resist our passions, it is more due to their weakness than our strength.

Good advice is something a man gives when he is too old to set a bad example.

We pardon to the extent that we love.

In friendship as well as love, ignorance very often contributes more to our happiness than knowledge.

In most of mankind gratitude is merely a secret hope of further favors.

However rare true love may be, it is less so than true friendship.

One forgives to the degree that one loves.

The happiness and misery of men depend no less on temper than fortune.

There is no disguise which can hide love for long where it exists, or simulate it where it does not.

We may seem great in an employment below our worth, but we very often look little in one that is too big for us.

Those that have had great passions esteem themselves for the rest of their lives fortunate and unfortunate in being cured of them.

Jealousy lives upon doubts. It becomes madness or ceases entirely as soon as we pass from doubt to certainty.

Absence diminishes mediocre passions and increases great ones, as the wind extinguishes candles and fans fires.

Neither the sun nor death can be looked at with a steady eye.

We only acknowledge small faults in order to make it appear that we are free from great ones.

What men have called friendship is only a social arrangement, a mutual adjustment of interests, an interchange of services given and received it is, in sum, simply a business from which those involved propose to derive a steady profit for their own self-love.

Though men are apt to flatter and exalt themselves with their great achievements, yet these are, in truth, very often owing not so much to design as chance.

Jealousy contains more of self-love than of love.

It is not in the power of even the most crafty dissimulation to conceal love long, where it really is, nor to counterfeit it long where it is not.

Old age is a tyrant, who forbids, under pain of death, the pleasures of youth.

It is great folly to wish to be wise all alone.

Perfect courage is to do without witnesses what one would be capable of doing with the world looking on.

It is a great act of cleverness to be able to conceal one's being clever.

There are a great many men valued in society who have nothing to recommend them but serviceable vices.

It is great folly to wish to be wise all alone.

Jealousy is bred in doubts. When those doubts change into certainties, then the passion either ceases or turns absolute madness.

What men have called friendship is only a social arrangement, a mutual adjustment of interests, an interchange of services given and received it is, in sum, simply a business from which those involved propose to derive a steady profit for their own self-love.

There are few virtuous women who are not bored with their trade.

Though men are apt to flatter and exalt themselves with their great achievements, yet these are, in truth, very often owing not so much to design as chance.

It is from a weakness and smallness of mind that men are opinionated and we are very loath to believe what we are not able to comprehend.

Flattery is a kind of bad money, to which our vanity gives us currency.

Our aversion to lying is commonly a secret ambition to make what we say considerable, and have every word received with a religious respect.

The generality of virtuous women are like hidden treasures, they are safe only because nobody has sought after them.

As great minds have the faculty of saying a great deal in a few words, so lesser minds have a talent of talking much, and saying nothing.

Love can no more continue without a constant motion than fire can and when once you take hope and fear away, you take from it its very life and being.

It is not enough to have great qualities We should also have the management of them.

The defects of the mind, like those of the face, grow worse with age.

Heat of blood makes young people change their inclinations often, and habit makes old ones keep to theirs a great while.

It is easier to know men in general, than men in particular.

It is with true love as it is with ghosts everyone talks about it, but few have seen it.

The happiness and misery of men depend no less on temper than fortune.

A great many men's gratitude is nothing but a secret desire to hook in more valuable kindnesses hereafter.

Love can no more continue without a constant motion than fire can and when once you take hope and fear away, you take from it its very life and being.

Taste may change, but inclination never.

Absence diminishes mediocre passions and increases great ones, as the wind extinguishes candles and fans fires.

However glorious an action in itself, it ought not to pass for great if it be not the effect of wisdom and intention.

Hope, deceiving as it is, serves at least to lead us to the end of our lives by an agreeable route.

No men are oftener wrong than those that can least bear to be so.

Some counterfeits reproduce so very well the truth that it would be a flaw of judgment not to be deceived by them.

Great souls are not those who have fewer passions and more virtues than others, but only those who have greater designs.

Those who are incapable of committing great crimes do not readily suspect them in others.

Our actions seem to have their lucky and unlucky stars, to which a great part of that blame and that commendation is due which is given to the actions themselves.

They that apply themselves to trifling matters commonly become incapable of great ones.

Love can no more continue without a constant motion than fire can and when once you take hope and fear away, you take from it its very life and being.

Heat of blood makes young people change their inclinations often, and habit makes old ones keep to theirs a great while.

Few people have the wisdom to prefer the criticism that would do them good, to the praise that deceives them.

If we have not peace within ourselves, it is in vain to seek it from outward sources.

We all have enough strength to endure the misfortunes of others.

In friendship as well as love, ignorance very often contributes more to our happiness than knowledge.

To know how to hide one's ability is great skill.

Too great haste to repay an obligation is a kind of ingratitude.

Men give away nothing so liberally as their advice.

There are but very few men clever enough to know all the mischief they do.

Repentance is not so much remorse for what we have done as the fear of the consequences.

There are a great many men valued in society who have nothing to recommend them but serviceable vices.

We seldom find any person of good sense, except those who share our opinions.

However glorious an action in itself, it ought not to pass for great if it be not the effect of wisdom and intention.

One is never fortunate or as unfortunate as one imagines.

However greatly we distrust the sincerity of those we converse with, yet still we think they tell more truth to us than to anyone else.

On neither the sun, nor death, can a man look fixedly.

As it is the characteristic of great wits to say much in few words, so small wits seem to have the gift of speaking much and saying nothing.

Nothing is so contagious as example and we never do any great good or evil which does not produce its like.

Nature seems at each man's birth to have marked out the bounds of his virtues and vices, and to have determined how good or how wicked that man shall be capable of being.

Though nature be ever so generous, yet can she not make a hero alone. Fortune must contribute her part too and till both concur, the work cannot be perfected.

We give advice, but we cannot give the wisdom to profit by it.

Men often pass from love to ambition, but they seldom come back again from ambition to love.

There is no better proof of a man's being truly good than his desiring to be constantly under the observation of good men.

We are so used to dissembling with others that in time we come to deceive and dissemble with ourselves.

We should often feel ashamed of our best actions if the world could see all the motives which produced them.

What seems to be generosity is often no more than disguised ambition, which overlooks a small interest in order to secure a great one.

Few things are impracticable in themselves and it is for want of application, rather than of means, that men fail to succeed.

We are all strong enough to bear other men's misfortunes.

No man deserves to be praised for his goodness, who has it not in his power to be wicked. Goodness without that power is generally nothing more than sloth, or an impotence of will.

One can find women who have never had one love affair, but it is rare indeed to find any who have had only one.

We come altogether fresh and raw into the several stages of life, and often find ourselves without experience, despite our years.

Gratitude is merely the secret hope of further favors.

There are a great many men valued in society who have nothing to recommend them but serviceable vices.

There is nothing men are so generous of as advice.

You can find women who have never had an affair, but it is hard to find a woman who has had just one.

Many men are contemptuous of riches few can give them away.

It is great folly to wish to be wise all alone.

Though men are apt to flatter and exalt themselves with their great achievements, yet these are, in truth, very often owing not so much to design as chance.

Old age is a tyrant, who forbids, under pain of death, the pleasures of youth.

We are nearer loving those who hate us than those who love us more than we wish.

Though men are apt to flatter and exalt themselves with their great achievements, yet these are, in truth, very often owing not so much to design as chance.

There is a kind of elevation which does not depend on fortune it is a certain air which distinguishes us, and seems to destine us for great things it is a price which we imperceptibly set upon ourselves.

Most people know no other way of judging men's worth but by the vogue they are in, or the fortunes they have met with.

A great many men's gratitude is nothing but a secret desire to hook in more valuable kindnesses hereafter.

True love is like ghosts, which everyone talks about and few have seen.

There is only one kind of love, but there are a thousand imitations.

Women's virtue is frequently nothing but a regard to their own quiet and a tenderness for their reputation.

A work can become modern only if it is first postmodern. Postmodernism thus understood is not modernism at its end but in the nascent state, and this state is constant.

However rare true love may be, it is less so than true friendship.

Old men are fond of giving good advice to console themselves for their inability to give bad examples.

It is with an old love as it is with old age a man lives to all the miseries, but is dead to all the pleasures.

When we disclaim praise, it is only showing our desire to be praised a second time.

We should often blush for our very best actions, if the world did but see all the motives upon which they were done.

It is with an old love as it is with old age a man lives to all the miseries, but is dead to all the pleasures.