The generality of virtuous women are like hidden treasures, they are safe only because nobody has sought after them.
Francois De La RochefoucauldRead
We are more often treacherous through weakness than through calculation.
Interpretation
Weakness can lead to betrayal more than careful planning can.
This quote suggests that human frailty or moral weakness is a common cause of betrayal, rather than intentional malice or premeditated deceit. It emphasizes that individuals may act treacherously not out of a deliberate plan, but due to vulnerabilities or failures in character that drive them to such actions.
In practice
This quote can be used in a discussion about ethics in business.
The generality of virtuous women are like hidden treasures, they are safe only because nobody has sought after them.
Old men delight in giving good advice as a consolation for the fact that they can no longer set bad examples.
Some counterfeits reproduce so very well the truth that it would be a flaw of judgment not to be deceived by them.
Conceit causes more conversation than wit.
The defects and faults of the mind are like wounds in the body; after all imaginable care has been taken to heal them up, still there will be a scar left behind, and they are in continual danger of breaking the skin and bursting out again.
To understand matters rightly we should understand their details; and as that knowledge is almost infinite, our knowledge is always superficial and imperfect.
It is a terrible thought, to contemplate that an immense number of mediocre thinkers are occupied with really influential matters.
The mountains have rules. they are harsh rules, but they are there, and if you keep to them you are safe. A mountain is not like men. A mountain is sincere. The weapons to conquer it exist inside you, inside your soul.
Because your brain uses information from the areas around the blind spot to make a reasonable guess about what the blind spot would see if only it weren't blind, and then your brain fills in the scene with this information. That's right, it invents things, creates things, makes stuff up! It doesn't consult you about this, doesn't seek your approval. It just makes its best guess about the nature of the missing information and proceeds to fill in the scene.
I would not have thee believe in what I say nor trust in what I do β for my words are naught but thy own thoughts in sound and my deeds thy own hopes in action.
Each small task of everyday life is part of the total harmony of the universe.
He saw something that makes a man doubtful of the constancy of the realities outside himself. It was the shocking discovery that makes a man wonder if I've missed this, what else have I failed to see?
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