Moralist Quotes

“The appearances of goodness and merit often meet with a greater reward from the world than goodness and merit themselves.”

“The reason we bitterly hate those who deceive us is because they think they are cleverer than we are.”

“Self-love makes our friends appear more or less deserving in proportion to the delight we take in them, and the measures by whichwe judge of their worth depend upon the manner of their conversing with us.”

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

“We should desire very few things passionately if we did but perfectly know the nature of the things we desire.”

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

“Of all the violent passions, the one that becomes a woman best is love.”

“The older a fool is, the worse he is.”

“It is a mighty error to suppose that none but violent and strong passions, such as love and ambition, are able to vanquish the rest. Even idleness, as feeble and languishing as it is, sometimes reigns over them; it usurps the throne and sits paramount over all the designs and actions of our lives, and imperceptibly wastes and destroys all our passions and all our virtues.”

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

“What makes vanity so insufferable to us, is that it hurts our own.”

“We should not judge a man's merits by his great qualities, but by the use he makes of them.”

“It is impossible to love a second time what we have really ceased to love.”

“Prudence and love are inconsistent; in proportion as the last increases, the other decreases.”

“We always get bored with those whom we bore.”

“In all professions each affects a look and an exterior to appear what he wishes the world to believe that he is. Thus we may say that the whole world is made up of appearances.”

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

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

“The truest comparison we can make of love is to liken it to a fever; we have no more power over the one than the other, either as to its violence or duration.”

“Few know how to be old.”

“In their early passions women are in love with the lover, later they are in love with love.”

“Nature has concealed at the bottom of our minds talents and abilities of which we are not aware.”

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

“Hatred is stronger than friendship.”

“That man, we may be sure, is a person of true worth, whom those who envy him most are yet forced to praise.”