Quotes from Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Our aversion to lying is commonly a secret ambition to make what we say considerable, and have every word received with a religious respect.

If we did not flatter ourselves, the flattery of others could never harm us.

There are heroes in evil as well as in good.

Nothing hinders a thing from being natural so much as the straining ourselves to make it seem so.

Men often pass from love to ambition, but they seldom come back again from ambition to love.

There are people who, like new songs, are in vogue only for a time.

There is a kind of love, the excess of which forbids jealousy.

I have always been an admirer. I regard the gift of admiration as indispensable if one is to amount to something; I don't know where I would be without it.

It is almost always a fault of one who loves not to realize when he ceases to be loved.

Why can we remember the tiniest detail that has happened to us, and not remember how many times we have told it to the same person.

The defects of the mind, like those of the face, grow worse with age.

We may seem great in an employment below our worth, but we very often look little in one that is too big for us.

Some people are like popular songs that you only sing for a short time.

Nothing is so capable of diminishing self-love as the observation that we disapprove at one time what we approve at another.

We are so used to dissembling with others that in time we come to deceive and dissemble with ourselves.

There are persons whose only merit consists in saying and doing stupid things at the right time, and who ruin all if they change their manners.

When a man must force himself to be faithful in his love, this is hardly better than unfaithfulness.

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.

We always love those who admire us, but we do not always love those whom we admire.

Jealousy is not so much the love of another as the love of ourselves.

Sobriety is love of health, or inability to eat much.

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

The better part of one's life consists of his friendships. ABRAHAM LINCOLN, letter to Joseph Gillespie, July 13, 1849 Friendship is insipid to those who have experienced love.

Love's greatest miracle is the curing of coquetry.