Francois De La Rochefoucauld

The pleasure of love is in loving; we are happier in the passion we feel than in what we inspire.

Weakness is more opposed to virtue than is vice.

When our vices desert us, we flatter ourselves that we are deserting our vices.

The extreme delight we experience in talking about ourselves should warn us that those who listen do not share it.

The intention of never deceiving often exposes us to deception.

Nothing should lessen our satisfaction with ourselves as much as when we notice that we disapprove of something at one time that we approve of at another time.

Behind many acts that are thought ridiculous there lie wise and weighty motives.

Pity is often a reflection of our own evils in the ills of others. It is a delicate foresight of the troubles into which we may fall.

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.

Gratitude is a useless word. You will find it in a dictionary but not in life.

Imagination does not enable us to invent as many different contradictions as there are by nature in every heart.

We may give advice, but not the sense to use it.

Sometimes there is equal or more ability in knowing how to use good advice than there is in giving it.

There are people who in spite of their merit disgust us and others who please us in spite of their faults.

We are inconsolable at being deceived by our enemies and being betrayed by our friends, yet we are often content in be being treated like that by our own selves.

We are much harder on people who betray us in small ways than on people who betray others in great ones.

What renders other people's vanity insufferable is that it wounds our own.

Eloquence: saying the proper thing and stopping.

There is at least as much eloquence in the voice, eyes, and air of a speaker as in his choice of words.

The qualities we have, make us so ridiculous as those which we affect.

When fortune surprises us by giving us some great office without having gradually led us to expect it, or without having raised our hopes, it is well nigh impossible to occupy it well, and to appear worthy to fill it.