Boredom … causes us to neglect more duties than does interest.
We often forgive those who bore us but can’t forgive those whom we bore.
Perfect courage means doing unwitnessed what we would be capable of with the world looking on.
If we resist our passions it is more from their weakness than from our strength.
The passions are the only orators which always persuade.
Reason alone is insufficient to make us enthusiastic in any matter.
There are no accidents so unlucky from which clever people are not able to reap some advantage and none so lucky that the foolish are not able to turn them to their own disadvantage.
We promise according to our hopes and perform according to our fears.
One is never fortunate or as unfortunate as one imagines.
What men call friendship is no more than a partnership a mutual care of interests an exchange of favors – in a word it is a sort of traffic in which self-love ever proposes to be the gainer.
It is more shameful to distrust our friends than to be deceived by them.
A true friend is the greatest of all blessings and that which we take the least care of all to acquire.
Friendship is only a reciprocal conciliation of interests.
If we have not peace within ourselves it is in vain to seek it from outward sources.
A man’s happiness or unhappiness depends as much on his temperament as on his destiny.
We do not wish ardently for what we desire only through reason.
Though men pride themselves on their great actions often they are not the result of any great design but of chance.
Happiness is in the taste and not in the things themselves we are happy from possessing what we like not from possessing what others like.
The virtues and the vices are all put in motion by interest.
Interest speaks all sorts of tongues and plays all sorts of parts even that of disinterestedness.
In great affairs we ought to apply ourselves less to creating chances than to profiting from those that are offered.
Before we set our hearts too much upon anything let us examine how happy they are who already possess it.
When we are unable to find tranquility within ourselves it is useless to seek it elsewhere.
The confidence which we have in ourselves gives birth to much of that which we have in others.
To establish oneself in the world one has to do all one can to appear established.
There are more defects in temperament than in the mind.
It is as proper to have pride in oneself as it is ridiculous to show it to others.
The confidence which we have in ourselves gives birth to much of that which we have in others.
A man who finds no satisfaction in himself seeks for it in vain elsewhere.
True eloquence consists of saying all that should be said and that only.
We should scarcely desire things ardently if we were perfectly acquainted with what we desire.
The prospect of being pleased tomorrow will never console me for the boredom of today.
I always say to myself what is the most important thing we can think about at this extraordinary moment.
True love is like ghosts which everybody talks about and few have seen.
True love is like ghosts which everybody talks about and few have seen.
Hope, deceiving as it is, serves at least to lead us to the end of our lives by an agreeable route.
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.
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.
It is not enough to have great qualities We should also have the management of them.
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.
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.
It is almost always a fault of one who loves not to realize when he ceases to be loved.
Passion makes idiots of the cleverest men, and makes the biggest idiots clever.
Men give away nothing so liberally as their advice.
Perfect Valor is to do, without a witness, all that we could do before the whole world.
Philosophy finds it an easy matter to vanquish past and future evils, but the present are commonly too hard for it.