Before we set our hearts too much upon anything, let us examine how happy they are, who already possess it.
Francois de La Rochefouca
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One forgives to the degree that one loves.
There is no disguise which can hide love for long where it exists, or simulate it where it does not.
Absence diminishes mediocre passions and increases great ones, as the wind extinguishes candles and fans fires.
True love is like ghosts, which everyone talks about and few have seen.
A refusal of praise is a desire to be praised twice.
A true friend is the greatest of all blessings, and that which we take the least care of all to acquire.
A wise man thinks it more advantageous not to join the battle than to win.
All the passions make us commit faults; love makes us commit the most ridiculous ones.
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.
As one grows older, one becomes wiser and more foolish.
Before we set our hearts too much upon anything, let us examine how happy they are, who already possess it.
Certainly we're not satisfied with just winning games. We've been playing some pretty good hockey, but we think we can play much better.
Conceit causes more conversation than wit.
Confidence contributes more to conversation than wit.
Decency is the least of all laws, but yet it is the law which is most strictly observed.
Everyone complains of his memory, and nobody complains of his judgment.
Few things are impracticable in themselves; and it is for want of application, rather than of means, that men fail to succeed.
Flattery is a kind of bad money, to which our vanity gives us currency.
Funeral pomp is more for the vanity of the living than for the honor of the dead.
Good advice is something a man gives when he is too old to set a bad example.
Gracefulness is to the body what understanding is to the mind.
Gratitude is merely the secret hope of further favors.
Great souls are not those who have fewer passions and more virtues than others, but only those who have greater designs.
Hope, deceiving as it is, serves at least to lead us to the end of our lives by an agreeable route.
How can we expect another to keep our secret if we have been unable to keep it ourselves?
However rare true love may be, it is less so than true friendship.
Hypocrisy is the homage vice pays to virtue.
I have always been an admirer. I regard the gift of admiration as indispensable if one is to amount to something; I don't know where I would be without it.
If it were not for the company of fools, a witty man would often be greatly at a loss.
If we are to judge of love by its consequences, it more nearly resembles hatred than friendship.
If we had no faults of our own, we should not take so much pleasure in noticing those in others.
If we resist our passions, it is more due to their weakness than our strength.
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.
In love we often doubt what we most believe.
In most of mankind gratitude is merely a secret hope of further favors.
In the human heart new passions are forever being born; the overthrow of one almost always means the rise of another.
In the misfortunes of our best friends we always find something not altogether displeasing to us.
It is easier to appear worthy of a position one does not hold, than of the office which one fills.
It is easier to be wise for others than for ourselves.
It is easier to know men in general, than men in particular.
It is great folly to wish to be wise all alone.
It is not enough to have great qualities; We should also have the management of them.
It is with true love as it is with ghosts; everyone talks about it, but few have seen it.
It takes nearly as much ability to know how to profit by good advice as to know how to act for one's self.
It's easier to be wise for others than for ourselves.
Jealously is always born with love but it does not die with it.
Jealousy contains more of self-love than of love.
Jealousy lives upon doubts. It becomes madness or ceases entirely as soon as we pass from doubt to certainty.
Jealousy springs more from love of self than from love of another.
Live on doubts; it becomes madness or stops entirely as soon as we pass from doubt to certainty.
Love often leads on to ambition, but seldom does one return from ambition to love.
Mediocre minds usually dismiss anything which reaches beyond their own understanding.
Men give away nothing so liberally as their advice.
Most of our faults are more pardonable than the means we use to conceal them.
Neither the sun nor death can be looked at with a steady eye
Never give anyone the advice to buy or sell shares, because the most benevolent price of advice can turn out badly.
No man is clever enough to know all the evil he does.
Not all those who know their minds know their hearts as well.
Nothing is impossible; there are ways that lead to everything, and if we had sufficient will we should always have sufficient means. It is often merely for an excuse that we say things are impossible.
Nothing is so contagious as example; and we never do any great good or evil which does not produce its like.
Nothing prevents one from appearing natural as the desire to appear natural.
Old age is a tyrant, who forbids, under pain of death, the pleasures of youth.
Old men are fond of giving good advice to console themselves for their inability to give bad examples.
Old people love to give good advice; it compensates them for their inability to set a bad example.
One is never fortunate or as unfortunate as one imagines.
Our actions are like the terminations of verses, which we rhyme as we please.
Our virtues are most frequently but vices in disguise.
Passion makes idiots of the cleverest men, and makes the biggest idiots clever.
Passions are the only orators to always convinces us.
Perfect behavior is born of complete indifference.
Perfect Valor is to do, without a witness, all that we could do before the whole world.
Perfect valour consists in doing without witnesses that which we would be capable of doing before everyone.
Perhaps being old is having lighted rooms inside your head, and people in them, acting. People you know, yet can't quite name.
Preserving health by too severe a rule is a worrisome malady.
Pride does not wish to owe and vanity does not wish to pay.
Quarrels would not last long if the fault was only on one side.
Repentance is not so much remorse for what we have done as the fear of the consequences.
Silence is the safest course for any man to adopt who distrust himself.
Taste may change, but inclination never.
The accent of one's birthplace remains in the mind and in the heart as in one's speech.
The desire to seem clever often keeps us from being so.
The happiness and misery of men depend no less on temper than fortune.
The heart is forever making the head its fool.
The intellect is always fooled by the heart.
The mind is always the patsy of the heart.
The one thing people are the most liberal with, is their advice.
The only good imitations are those that poke fun at bad originals.
The only thing that should surprise us is that there are still some things that can surprise us.
The passions are the only orators which always persuade.
The reason that lovers never weary each other is because they are always talking about themselves.
The reason why so few people are agreeable in conversation is that each is thinking more about what he intends to say than others are saying.
The sure mark of one born with noble qualities is being born without envy.
The sure way to be cheated is to think one's self more cunning than others.
The virtues and vices are all put in motion by interest.
The word virtue is as useful to self-interest as the vices.
There are bad people who would be less dangerous if they were quite devoid of goodness.
There are crimes which become innocent and even glorious through their splendor, number and excess.
There are heroes in evil as well as in good.
There are various sorts of curiosity; one is from interest, which makes us desire to know that which may be useful to us; and the other, from pride which comes from the wish to know what others are ignorant of.
There are very few people who are not ashamed of having been in love when they no longer love each other.
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.
There is no disguise that can for long conceal love where it exists or simulate it where it does not.
There is only one kind of love, but there are a thousand imitations.
Those who are incapable of committing great crimes do not readily suspect them in others.
Those who occupy their minds with small matters, generally become incapable of greatness.
Timidity is a fault for which it is dangerous to reprove persons whom we wish to correct of it.
To achieve greatness one should live as if they will never die.
To know how to hide one's ability is great skill.
Too great haste to repay an obligation is a kind of ingratitude.
Usually we praise only to be praised.
Virtue would go far if vanity did not keep it company.
We all have enough strength to endure the misfortunes of others.
We always get bored with those whom we bore.
We always love those who admire us, but we do not always love those whom we admire.
We are more interested in making others believe we are happy than in trying to be happy ourselves.
We are more often treacherous through weakness than through calculation.
We are nearer loving those who hate us than those who love us more than we wish.
We are so accustomed to disguise ourselves to others that in the end we become disguised to ourselves.
We are strong enough to bear the misfortunes of others.
We confess our little faults to persuade people that we have no large ones.
We do not despise all those who have vices, but we do despise those that have no virtue.
We get so much in the habit of wearing disguises before others that we finally appear disguised before ourselves.
We give advice, but we cannot give the wisdom to profit by it.
We often forgive those who bore us, but we cannot forgive those whom we bore.
We only acknowledge small faults in order to make it appear that we are free from great ones.
We only confess our little faults to persuade people that we have no big ones.
We promise according to our hopes and perform according to our fears.
We seldom find any person of good sense, except those who share our opinions.
We seldom find people ungrateful so long as it is thought we can serve them.
We should often feel ashamed of our best actions if the world could see all the motives which produced them.
We would frequently be ashamed of our good deeds if people saw all of the motives that produced them.
We would rather speak ill of ourselves than not talk about ourselves at all.
Weakness of character is the only defect which cannot be amended.
What is called generosity is usually only the vanity of giving; we enjoy the vanity more than the thing given.
What makes vanity so insufferable to us, is that it hurts our own.
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.
What seems to be generosity is often no more than disguised ambition, which overlooks a small interest in order to secure a great one.
When our hatred is violent, it sinks us even beneath those we hate.
When we are in love we often doubt that which we most believe.
When we disclaim praise, it is only showing our desire to be praised a second time.
Why can we remember the tiniest detail that has happened to us, and not remember how many times we have told it to the same person.
Why is it that our memory is good enough to retain the least triviality that happens to us, and yet not good enough to recollect how often we have told it to the same person?
Wit sometimes enables us to act rudely with impunity.
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