Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
There is such a thing as a general revolution which changes the taste of men as it changes the fortunes of the world.
The esteem of good men is the reward of our worth, but the reputation of the world in general is the gift of our fate.
It is often hard to determine whether a clear, open, and honorable proceeding is the result of goodness or of cunning.
The pleasure of love is in the loving; and there is more joy in the passion one feels than in that which one inspires.
Most people know no other way of judging men's worth but by the vogue they are in, or the fortunes they have met with.
When the heart is still disturbed by the relics of a passion it is proner to take up a new one than when wholly cured.
Happy people rarely correct their faults; they consider themselves vindicated, since fortune endorses their evil ways.
It often happens that things come into the mind in a more finished form than could have been achieved after much study.
Only strong natures can really be sweet ones; those that seem sweet are in general only weak, and may easily turn sour.
The boldest stroke and best act of friendship is not to disclose our own failings to a friend, but to show him his own.
There are a great many simpletons who know themselves to be so, and who make a very cunning use of their own simplicity.
Absence abates a moderate passion and intensifies a great one - as the wind blows out a candle but fans fire into flame.
There are few occasions when we should make a bad bargain by giving up the good on condition that no ill was said of us.
We have more ability than will power, and it is often an excuse to ourselves that we imagine that things are impossible.
The best way to rise in society is to use all possible means of persuading people that one has already risen in society.
Heat of blood makes young people change their inclinations often, and habit makes old ones keep to theirs a great while.
Great souls are not those who have fewer passions and more virtues than others, but only those who have greater designs.
What makes the pain we feel from shame and jealousy so cutting is that vanity can give us no assistance in bearing them.
Neither love nor fire can subsist without perpetual motion; both cease to live so soon as they cease to hope, or to fear.
The appearances of goodness and merit often meet with a greater reward from the world than goodness and merit themselves.
Love, like fire, cannot subsist without constant impulse; it ceases to live from the moment it ceases to hope or to fear.
A man of understanding finds less difficulty in submitting to a wrong-headed fellow, than in attempting to set him right.
We acknowledge that we should not talk of our wives; but we seem not to know that we should talk still less of ourselves.
We should wish for few things with eagerness, if we perfectly knew the nature of that which was the object of our desire.
A small degree of wit, accompanied by good sense, is less tiresome in the long run than a great amount of wit without it.
Eloquence resides as much in the tone of voice, in the eyes, and in the expression of the face, as in the choice of words.
Nothing ought more to humiliate men who have merited great praise than the care they still take to boast of little things.
The violence we do to ourselves in order to remain faithful to the one we love is hardly better than an act of infidelity.
There is no better proof of a man's being truly good than his desiring to be constantly under the observation of good men.
It is as easy to deceive one's self without perceiving it, as it is difficult to deceive others without their finding out.
The whimsicalness of our own humor is a thousand times more fickle and unaccountable than what we blame so much in fortune.
It is difficult to like those whom we do not esteem; but it is no less so to like those whom we esteem more than ourselves.
It is not expedient or wise to examine our friends too closely; few persons are raised in our esteem by a close examination.
Jealousy is always born with love, but does not die with it. In jealousy there is more of self-love than of love to another.
Nothing is so capable of diminishing self-love as the observation that we disapprove at one time what we approve at another.
The shame that arises from praise which we do not deserve often makes us do things we should otherwise never have attempted.
In friendship, as in love, we are often more happy from the things we are ignorant of than from those we are acquainted with.
The moderation of men in the most exalted fortunes is a desire to be thought above those things that have raised them so high.
Perhaps being old is having lighted rooms inside your head, and people in them, acting. People you know, yet can't quite name.
Few things are impracticable in themselves; and it is for want of application, rather than of means, that men fail to succeed.
The moderation of people in prosperity is the effect of a smooth and composed temper, owing to the calm of their good fortune.
The desire of talking of ourselves, and showing those faults we do not mind having seen, makes up a good part of our sincerity.
He who lives without committing any folly is not so wise as he thinks. [Fr., Qui vit sans folie n'est pas si sage qu'il croit.]
For the credit of virtue we must admit that the greatest misfortunes of men are those into which they fall through their crimes.
The reason we do not let our friends see the very bottom of our hearts is not so much distrust of them as distrust of ourselves.
Whatever pretended causes we may blame our afflictions upon, it is often nothing but self-interest and vanity that produce them.
We often select envenomed praise which, by a reaction upon those we praise, shows faults we could not have shown by other means.
The largest ambition has the least appearance of ambition when it meets with an absolute impossibility in compassing its object.
Some people are so extremely whiffling and inconsiderable that they are as far from any real faults as from substantial virtues.
We sometimes condemn the present, by praising the past; and show our contempt of what is now, by our esteem for what is no more.