François de La Rochefoucauld

“Jealousy is not love, but self-love.”

“Tis more dishonourable to distrust a friend than to be deceived by him.”

“Death and the sun are not to be looked at steadily.”

“Those only are despicable who fear to be despised.”

“Some beautiful things are more dazzling when they are still imperfect than when they have been too perfectly crafted.”

“We rarely think people have good sense unless they agree with us.”

“Generally speaking, we would make a good bargain by renouncing all the good that people say of us, upon condition they would say no ill.”

“It is safer to do most men harm than to do them too much good.”

“We love everything on our own account; we even follow our own taste and inclination when we prefer our friends to ourselves; and yet it is this preference alone that constitutes true and perfect friendship.”

“Jealousy is not so much the love of another as the love of ourselves.”

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

“Few things are needed to make a wise man happy; nothing can make a fool content; that is why most men are miserable.”

“Some people are so extremely whiffling and inconsiderable that they are as far from any real faults as from substantial virtues.”

“There are two things which Man cannot look at directly without flinching: the sun and death.”

“Sometimes there is equal or more ability in knowing how to use good advice than there is in giving it.”

“We should only affect compassion, and carefully avoid having any.”

“Lovers, when they are no longer in love, find it very hard to break up.”

“We often pardon those that annoy us, but we cannot pardon those we annoy.”

“A readiness to believe ill of others, before we have duly examined it, is the effect of laziness and pride. We are eager to find aculprit, and loath to give ourselves the trouble of examining the crime.”

“We forgive just so long as we love.”

“Moderation is the feebleness and sloth of the soul, whereas ambition is the warmth and activity of it.”

“We like to read others but we do not like to be read.”

“Friendship is a traffic wherein self-love always proposes to be the gainer.”

“The trust that we put in ourselves makes us feel trust in others.”

“That conduct often seems ridiculous the secret reasons of which are wise and solid.”

“It is a mistake to imagine, that the violent passions only, such as ambition and love, can triumph over the rest. Idleness, languid as it is, often masters them all; she influences all our designs and actions, and insensibly consumes and destroys both passions and virtues.”

“Opportunity makes us known to others, but more to ourselves.”

“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.”

“Second-rate minds usually condemn everything beyond their grasp.”

“Perfect courage and utter cowardice are two extremes which rarely occur.”

“We are almost always wearied in the company of persons with whom we are not permitted to be weary.”

“Often we are firm from weakness, and audacious from timidity.”

“The desire to seem clever often keeps us from being so.”

“How can we expect another to keep our secret if we have been unable to keep it ourselves?”

“The best way to rise in society is to use all possible means of persuading people that one has already risen in society.”

“Sometimes there are accidents in our lives the skillful extrication from which demands a little folly.”

“All women seem by nature to be coquettes.”

“We often persuade ourselves to love people who are more powerful than we are, yet interest alone produces our friendship; we do not give our hearts away for the good we wish to do, but for that we expect to receive.”

“What we cut off from our other faults is very often but so much added to our pride.”

“Marriage is the only war in which you sleep with the enemy.”

“Though most of the friendships of the world ill deserve the name of friendships; yet a man may make use of them on occasion, as of a traffic whose returns are uncertain, and in which 'tis usual to be cheated.”

“Hypocrisy is the homage vice pays to virtue.”

“The hate of favourites is only a love of favour. The envy of NOT possessing it, consoles and softens its regrets by the contempt it evinces for those who possess it, and we refuse them our homage, not being able to detract from them what attracts that of the rest of the world.”

“The surest way to be deceived is to consider oneself cleverer than others.”

“If one judges love according to the greatest part of the effects it produces, it would appear to resemble rather hatred than kindness.”

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

“Passion often makes a fool of the cleverest man and often makes the most foolish men clever”

“Men sometimes think they hate flattery, but they hate only the manner of flattering.”

“Avarice misapprehends itself almost always. There is no passion which more often will miss its aim, nor upon which the present has so much influence to the prejudice of the future.”

“There are people who would never have been in love, had they never heard love spoken of.”