Francois De La Rochefoucauld

You can find women who have never had an affair, but it is hard to find a woman who has had just one.

Jealousy is the greatest of all evils, and the one that arouses the least pity in the person who causes it.

We do not despise all those who have vices, but we do despise those that have no virtue.

Many men are contemptuous of riches; few can give them away.

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.

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

Passion makes idiots of the cleverest men, and makes the biggest idiots clever.

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?

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.

A great many men's gratitude is nothing but a secret desire to hook in more valuable kindnesses hereafter.

He who lives without folly isn't so wise as he thinks.

The first lover is kept a long while, when no offer is made of a second.

The more one loves a mistress, the more one is ready to hate her.

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

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

Nothing hinders a thing from being natural so much as the straining ourselves to make it seem so.

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.

Men often pass from love to ambition, but they seldom come back again from ambition to love.

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

Jealously is always born with love but it does not die with it.

Ridicule dishonors a man more than dishonor does.