If we have not peace within ourselves, it is in vain to seek it from outward sources.
— Francois de La Rochefoucauld
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.
How is it that we remember the least triviality that happens to us, and yet not remember how often we have recounted it to the same person?
The force we use on ourselves, to prevent ourselves from loving, is often more cruel than the severest treatment at the hands of one loved.
Heat of blood makes young people change their inclinations often, and habit makes old ones keep to theirs a great while.
Ridicule dishonors a man more than dishonor does.
Nature seems at each man's birth to have marked out the bounds of his virtues and vices, and to have determined how good or how wicked that man shall be capable of being.
What keeps us from abandoning ourselves entirely to one vice, often, is the fact that we have several.
Few people have the wisdom to prefer the criticism that would do them good, to the praise that deceives them.
Though men are apt to flatter and exalt themselves with their great achievements, yet these are, in truth, very often owing not so much to design as chance.
Men often pass from love to ambition, but they seldom come back again from ambition to love.
The first lover is kept a long while, when no offer is made of a second.
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.
We easily forgive our friends those faults that do no affect us ourselves.
Fortune converts everything to the advantage of her favorites.
There are few virtuous women who are not bored with their trade.
We do not praise others, ordinarily, but in order to be praised ourselves.
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.
We should often blush for our very best actions, if the world did but see all the motives upon which they were done.
The moderation of people in prosperity is the effect of a smooth and composed temper, owing to the calm of their good fortune.
They that apply themselves to trifling matters commonly become incapable of great ones.
Our aversion to lying is commonly a secret ambition to make what we say considerable, and have every word received with a religious respect.
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.
What makes the pain we feel from shame and jealousy so cutting is that vanity can give us no assistance in bearing them.
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.
Though nature be ever so generous, yet can she not make a hero alone. Fortune must contribute her part too; and till both concur, the work cannot be perfected.
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 are all strong enough to bear other men's misfortunes.
When our vices leave us, we like to imagine it is we who are leaving them.
We often pardon those that annoy us, but we cannot pardon those we annoy.
People always complain about their memories, never about their minds.
If we judge love by most of its effects, it resembles rather hatred than affection.
There are but very few men clever enough to know all the mischief they do.
Every one speaks well of his own heart, but no one dares speak well of his own mind.
Jealousy is bred in doubts. When those doubts change into certainties, then the passion either ceases or turns absolute madness.
We say little, when vanity does not make us speak.
It's the height of folly to want to be the only wise one.
We come altogether fresh and raw into the several stages of life, and often find ourselves without experience, despite our years.
He who lives without folly isn't so wise as he thinks.
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.
On neither the sun, nor death, can a man look fixedly.
People's personalities, like buildings, have various facades, some pleasant to view, some not.
In friendship as well as love, ignorance very often contributes more to our happiness than knowledge.
The generality of virtuous women are like hidden treasures, they are safe only because nobody has sought after them.
We are sometimes as different from ourselves as we are from others.
Whatever good things people say of us, they tell us nothing new.
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.
No men are oftener wrong than those that can least bear to be so.
There is nothing men are so generous of as advice.
There are a great many men valued in society who have nothing to recommend them but serviceable vices.
