Quotes from Francois de La Rochefoucauld

As love increases, prudence diminishes.

Even the most disinterested love is, after all, but a kind of bargain, in which self-love always proposes to be the gainer one wayor another.

Constancy in love ... is only inconstancy confined to one object.

It is easier to fall in love when you are out of it than to get out of it when you are in.

As uncommon a thing as true love is, it is yet easier to find than true friendship.

Love is one and the same in the original; but there are a thousand different copies of it.

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

Gratitude is merely the secret hope of further favors.

In jealousy there is more of self-love than love.

The pleasure of love is in loving; we are happier in the passion we feel than in the passion we inspire

The height of ability in the least able consists in knowing how to submit to the good leadership of others.

Chance corrects us of many faults that reason would not know how to correct.

To listen closely and reply well is the highest perfection we are able to attain in the art of conversation.

The shame that arises from praise which we do not deserve often makes us do things we should otherwise never have attempted.

In all professions each affects a look and an exterior to appear what he wishes the world to believe that he is. Thus we may say that the whole world is made up of appearances.

We are very far from always knowing our own wishes.

Being a blockhead is sometimes the best security against being cheated by a man of wit.

Conceit causes more conversation than wit.

Confidence contributes more to conversation than wit.

The moderation of people in prosperity is the effect of a smooth and composed temper, owing to the calm of their good fortune.

The reason why so few people are agreeable in conversation is that each is thinking more about what he intends to say than others are saying.

There are crimes which become innocent and even glorious through their splendor, number and excess.

When we are unable to find tranquility within ourselves, it is useless to seek it elsewhere.

Passion makes idiots of the cleverest men, and makes the biggest idiots clever.