Francois de La Rochefoucauld

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

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

“Men give away nothing so liberally as their advice.”

“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.”

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

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

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

“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.”

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

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

“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.”

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

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

“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.”

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

“Only the contemptible fear contempt.”

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

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

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

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

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

“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.”

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