Quotes from Luc de Clapiers

Few men have depth enough to hear or tell the truth.

Hope deceives more men than cunning does.

Men sometimes feel injured by praise because it assigns a limit to their merit; few people are modest enough not to take offense that one appreciates them.

Mediocre men sometimes fear great office, and when they do not aim at it, or when they refuse it, all that is to be concluded is that they are aware of their mediocrity.

Excessive distrust is not less hurtfJul than its opposite. Most men become useless to him who is unwilling to risk being deceived.

Great men, like nature, use simple language.

There does not exist a man sufficiently intelligent never to be tiresome.

We are less hurt by the contempt of fools than by the lukewarm approval of men of intelligence.

Men are not to be judged by what they do not know, but by what they know, and by the manner in which they know it.

Those who fear men like laws.

Great men are sometimes so even in small things.

Great men in teaching weak men to reflect have set them on the road to error.

Activity makes more men's fortunes than cautiousness.

Our errors and our controversies, in the sphere of morality, arise sometimes from looking on men as though they could be altogether bad, or altogether good.

Men crowd into honorable careers without other vocation than their vanity, or at best their love of fame.

A man can hardly be said to have made a fortune if he does not know how to enjoy it.

Men dissimulate their dearest, most constant, and most virtuous inclination from weakness and a fear of being condemned.

Men despise great projects when they do not feel themselves capable of great successes.

The greatest evil that fortune can bring to men is to endow them with feeble resources and yet to make them ambitious.

It is unjust to exact that men shall do out of deference to our advice what they have no desire to do for themselves.

A man who love only himself and his pleasures is vain, presumptuous, and wicked even from principle.

In order to protect himself from force, man was obliged to submit to justice. Justice or force: he was compelled to choose between the two masters, so little are we made to be independent.

Learn to overrule minor interest in favor of great ones, and generously to do all the good the heart prompts; a man is never injured by acting virtuously.

The law cannot equalize mankind in spite of nature.