Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fran%C3%A7ois_de_La_Rochefoucauld_(writer)
We should manage our fortune as we do our health: enjoy it when good, be patient when it is bad, and never apply violent remedies except in an extreme necessity.
A wise man thinks it more advantageous not to join the battle than to win.
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.
Repentance is not so much remorse for what we have done as the fear of the consequences.
One must listen if one wishes to be listened to.
The reason that there are so few good conversationalists is that most people are thinking about what they are going to say and not about what the others are saying.
How can we expect others to keep our secrets if we cannot keep them ourselves?
What makes the vanity of others insufferable to us is that it wounds our own.
The greatest fault of a penetrating wit is to go beyond the mark.
We hardly find any persons of good sense save those who agree with us.
Hardly any man is clever enough to know all the evil he does.
It is more difficult to avoid being ruled than to rule others.
The happiness and misery of men depend no less on temper than fortune.
If we are to judge of love by its consequences, it more nearly resembles hatred than friendship.
When not prompted by vanity, we say little.
Nothing is given so profusely as advice.
Old men delight in giving good advice as a consolation for the fact that they can no longer provide bad examples.
Sincerity is an openness of heart; we find it in very few people; what we usually see is only an artful dissimulation to win the confidence of others.
Men give away nothing so liberally as their advice.
We all have strength enough to endure the misfortunes of others.
Perfect behavior is born of complete indifference.
We are never so ridiculous through what we are as through what we pretend to be.
One forgives to the degree that one loves.
People's personalities, like buildings, have various facades, some pleasant to view, some not.
We have no patience with other people's vanity because it is offensive to 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.
The truest mark of having been born with great qualities is to have been born without envy.
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.
Mediocre minds usually dismiss anything which reaches beyond their own understanding.
If we had no faults, we would not take so much pleasure in noticing those of others.
Jealousy contains more of self-love than of love.
It is with true love as it is with ghosts; everyone talks about it, but few have seen it.
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.
Hypocrisy is the homage vice pays to virtue.
We seldom attribute common sense except to those who agree with us.
People's personalities, like buildings, have various facades, some pleasant to view, some not.
I am of a medium height, active, and well-proportioned. My complexion dark, but uniform, a high forehead; and of moderate height, black eyes, small, deep set, eyebrows black and thick but well placed. I am rather embarrassed in talking of my nose, for it is neither flat nor aquiline, nor large; nor pointed: but I believe, as far as I can say, it is too large than too small, and comes down just a trifle too low. I have a large mouth, lips generally red enough, neither shaped well nor badly. I have white teeth, and fairly even. I have been told I have a little too much chin. I have just looked at myself in the glass to ascertain the fact, and I do not know how to decide. As to the shape of my face, it is either square or oval, but which I should find it very difficult to say. I have black hair, which curls by nature, and thick and long enough to entitle me to lay claim to a fine head.