Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Nature seems at each man’s birth to have marked out the bounds of his virtues…

In the misfortunes of our best friends we always find something not altogether displeasing to…

We are so used to dissembling with others that in time we come to deceive…

However glorious an action in itself, it ought not to pass for great if it…

We give advice, but we cannot give the wisdom to profit by it…

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

We may seem great in an employment below our worth, but we very often look…

We should often blush for our very best actions, if the world did but see…

They that apply themselves to trifling matters commonly become incapable of great ones…

We come altogether fresh and raw into the several stages of life, and often find…

A work can become modern only if it is first postmodern. Postmodernism thus understood is…

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

Good advice is something a man gives when he is too old to set a…

It is with true love as it is with ghosts everyone talks about it, but…

Men give away nothing so liberally as their advice…