Quotes from la rochefoucauld vii

Of all the violent passions, the one that becomes a woman best is love.

The dullness of certain people is sometimes a sufficient security against the attack of an artful man.

A man cannot please long who has only one kind of wit.

Sometimes we meet a fool with wit, never one with discretion.

We easily forgive in our friends those faults we do not perceive.

Misers mistake gold for their good; whereas 'tis only a means of attaining it.

Those who have the most cunning affect all their lives to condemn cunning; that they may make use of it on some great occasion, and to some great end.

There are crimes which become innocent, and even glorious, through their splendor, number, and excess: Hence it is, that public theft is called Address, and to seize on Provinces unjustly, to make Conquests.

We may say, vices wait on us in the course of our life as the landlords with whom we successively lodge, and if we traveled the road twice over, I doubt if our experience would make us avoid them.

We may say of agreeableness, as distinct from beauty, that it is a symmetry whose rules are unknown.

What makes the vanity of others unsupportable is that it wounds our own.

If we took as much pains to be what we ought, as we do to deceive others by disguising what we are; we might appear as we are, without being at the trouble of any disguise.

Few things are impracticable in themselves; and 'tis for want of application, rather than of means, that men fail of success.

There are women who never had an intrigue; but there are scarce any who never had but one.

Envy is destroyed by true friendship, and coquetry by true love.

We have no more control over the duration of our passions than we do over the duration of our life.

What seems like generosity is often but a disguised ambition, which overlooks little interests, in order to gratify great ones.

We bear, all of us, the misfortunes of other people with heroic constancy.

Quarrels would not last long if the fault was only on one side.

A well-trained mind has less difficulty in submitting to than in guiding an ill-trained mind.