Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Nothing hinders a thing from being natural so much as the straining ourselves to make it seem so.
Women's virtue is frequently nothing but a regard to their own quiet and a tenderness for their reputation.
The greatest part of intimate confidences proceed from a desire either to be pitied or admired.
Some accidents there are in life that a little folly is necessary to help us out of.
Innocence does not find near so much protection as guilt.
The accent of a man's native country remains in his mind and his heart, as it does in his speech.
The more one loves a mistress, the more one is ready to hate her.
We promise in proportion to our hopes, and we deliver in proportion to our fears.
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.
When a man must force himself to be faithful in his love, this is hardly better than unfaithfulness.
When a man is in love, he doubts, very often, what he most firmly believes.
Many men are contemptuous of riches; few can give them away.
We are never so ridiculous through what we are as through what we pretend to be.
That good disposition which boasts of being most tender is often stifled by the least urging of self-interest.
Philosophy finds it an easy matter to vanquish past and future evils, but the present are commonly too hard for it.
Some counterfeits reproduce so very well the truth that it would be a flaw of judgment not to be deceived by them.
We are very far from always knowing our own wishes.
Pride, which inspires us with so much envy, is sometimes of use toward the moderating of it too.
The mind cannot long play the heart's role.
Only the contemptible fear contempt.
We are easily comforted for the misfortunes of our friends, when those misfortunes give us an occasion of expressing our affection and solicitude.
Those that have had great passions esteem themselves for the rest of their lives fortunate and unfortunate in being cured of them.
The desire of talking of ourselves, and showing those faults we do not mind having seen, makes up a good part of our sincerity.
It is not in the power of even the most crafty dissimulation to conceal love long, where it really is, nor to counterfeit it long where it is not.
A great many men's gratitude is nothing but a secret desire to hook in more valuable kindnesses hereafter.
A man's worth has its season, like fruit.
The man that thinks he loves his mistress for her own sake is mightily mistaken.
You can find women who have never had an affair, but it is hard to find a woman who has had just one.
Every one speaks well of his own heart, but no one dares speak well of his own mind.
We do not praise others, ordinarily, but in order to be praised ourselves.
There are a great many men valued in society who have nothing to recommend them but serviceable vices.
There is nothing men are so generous of as advice.
Fortune converts everything to the advantage of her favorites.
No men are oftener wrong than those that can least bear to be so.
People always complain about their memories, never about their minds.
We easily forgive our friends those faults that do no affect us ourselves.
We often pardon those that annoy us, but we cannot pardon those we annoy.
He is not to pass for a man of reason who stumbles upon reason by chance but he who knows it and can judge it and has a true taste for it.
The first lover is kept a long while, when no offer is made of a second.
We are sometimes as different from ourselves as we are from others.
Men often pass from love to ambition, but they seldom come back again from ambition to love.
The generality of virtuous women are like hidden treasures, they are safe only because nobody has sought after them.
Our actions seem to have their lucky and unlucky stars, to which a great part of that blame and that commendation is due which is given to the actions themselves.
People's personalities, like buildings, have various facades, some pleasant to view, some not.
If there be a love pure and free from the admixture of our other passions, it is that which lies hidden in the bottom of our heart, and which we know not ourselves.
What keeps us from abandoning ourselves entirely to one vice, often, is the fact that we have several.
What we call generosity is for the most part only the vanity of giving; and we exercise it because we are more fond of that vanity than of the thing we give.
Our concern for the loss of our friends is not always from a sense of their worth, but rather of our own need of them and that we have lost some who had a good opinion of us.
Ridicule dishonors a man more than dishonor does.
Heat of blood makes young people change their inclinations often, and habit makes old ones keep to theirs a great while.