Francois de La Rochefoucauld

“We come altogether fresh and raw into the several stages of life, and often find ourselves without experience, despite our years.”

“One forgives to the degree that one loves.”

“Too great haste to repay an obligation is a kind of ingratitude.”

“Jealousy is bred in doubts. When those doubts change into certainties, then the passion either ceases or turns absolute madness.”

“Taste may change, but inclination never.”

“On neither the sun, nor death, can a man look fixedly.”

“Love can no more continue without a constant motion than fire can and when once you take hope and fear away, you take from it its very life and being.”

“However rare true love may be, it is less so than true friendship.”

“If we are to judge of love by its consequences, it more nearly resembles hatred than friendship.”

“Few people have the wisdom to prefer the criticism that would do them good, to the praise that deceives them.”

“Nothing is so contagious as example and we never do any great good or evil which does not produce its like.”

“The happiness and misery of men depend no less on temper than fortune.”

“Jealousy contains more of self-love than of love.”

“What makes the pain we feel from shame and jealousy so cutting is that vanity can give us no assistance in bearing them.”

“It is with true love as it is with ghosts; everyone talks about it, but few have seen it.”

“We pardon to the extent that we love.”

“Most people know no other way of judging men's worth but by the vogue they are in, or the fortunes they have met with.”

“There are but very few men clever enough to know all the mischief they do.”

“Old men are fond of giving good advice to console themselves for their inability to give bad examples.”

“Flattery is a kind of bad money, to which our vanity gives us currency.”

“If we have not peace within ourselves, it is in vain to seek it from outward sources.”

“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.”

“One can find women who have never had one love affair, but it is rare indeed to find any who have had only one.”

“Women's virtue is frequently nothing but a regard to their own quiet and a tenderness for their reputation.”