Hope, deceiving as it is, serves at least to lead us to the end of our lives by an agreeable route.
~ François De La Rochefoucauld
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.
Our aversion to lying is commonly a secret ambition to make what we say considerable, and have every word received with a religious respect.
True love is like ghosts, which everyone talks about and few have seen.
Jealousy contains more of self-love than of love.
There is no disguise which can hide love for long where it exists, or simulate it where it does not.
There is only one kind of love, but there are a thousand imitations.
If we resist our passions, it is more due to their weakness than our strength.
We all have enough strength to endure the misfortunes of others.
We have no patience with other people's vanity because it is offensive to our own.
Neither the sun nor death can be looked at with a steady eye.
Old age is a tyrant, who forbids, under pain of death, the pleasures of youth.
You can find women who have never had an affair, but it is hard to find a woman who has had just one.
One can find women who have never had one love affair, but it is rare indeed to find any who have had only one.
There are few virtuous women who are not bored with their trade.
Good advice is something a man gives when he is too old to set a bad example.
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.
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.
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.
In friendship as well as love, ignorance very often contributes more to our happiness than knowledge.
We come altogether fresh and raw into the several stages of life, and often find ourselves without experience, despite our years.
Repentance is not so much remorse for what we have done as the fear of the consequences.
Perfect courage is to do without witnesses what one would be capable of doing with the world looking on.
There is a kind of elevation which does not depend on fortune; it is a certain air which distinguishes us, and seems to destine us for great things; it is a price which we imperceptibly set upon ourselves.
Heat of blood makes young people change their inclinations often, and habit makes old ones keep to theirs a great while.
One forgives to the degree that one loves.
We often forgive those who bore us, but we cannot forgive those whom we bore.
Jealousy lives upon doubts. It becomes madness or ceases entirely as soon as we pass from doubt to certainty.
Jealousy is bred in doubts. When those doubts change into certainties, then the passion either ceases or turns absolute madness.
What makes the pain we feel from shame and jealousy so cutting is that vanity can give us no assistance in bearing them.
One is never fortunate or as unfortunate as one imagines.
A true friend is the greatest of all blessings, and that which we take the least care of all to acquire.
If we are to judge of love by its consequences, it more nearly resembles hatred than friendship.
Flattery is a kind of bad money, to which our vanity gives us currency.
However glorious an action in itself, it ought not to pass for great if it be not the effect of wisdom and intention.
It is great folly to wish to be wise all alone.
We give advice, but we cannot give the wisdom to profit by it.
Few people have the wisdom to prefer the criticism that would do them good, to the praise that deceives them.
If we have not peace within ourselves, it is in vain to seek it from outward sources.
Absence diminishes mediocre passions and increases great ones, as the wind extinguishes candles and fans fires.
