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Constancy In Love Is A Perpetual Inconstancy Which Fixes Our Hearts Successively To All The Qualities Of The Person Loved--sometimes Admiring One And Sometimes Another Above All The Rest--so That This Constancy Roves As Far As It Can, And Is No Better Than Inconstancy, Confined Within The Compass Of One Person.

-Francois De La Rochefoucauld

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Constancy In Love Is

Francois De La Rochefoucauld

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Constancy In Love Is A Perpetual Inconstancy Which Fixes Our Hearts Successively To All The Qualities Of The Person Loved--sometimes Admiring One And Sometimes Another Above All The Rest--so That This Constancy Roves As Far As It Can, And Is No Better Than Inconstancy, Confined Within The Compass Of One Person.

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More From Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Love Has Its Name Borrowed By A Great Number Of Dealings And Affairs That Are Attributed To It--in Which It Has No Greater Part Than The Doge In What Is Done At Venice.

Often We Are Firm From Weakness, And Audacious From Timidity.

The Generality Of Virtuous Women Are Like Hidden Treasures, They Are Safe Only Because Nobody Has Sought After Them.

He That Would Be A Great Man Must Learn To Turn Every Accident To Some Advantage.

No Matter How Brilliant An Action, It Should Not Be Considered Great Unless It Was The Result Of A Great Motive.

Old Age Is A Tyrant, Who Forbids, Under Pain Of Death, The Pleasures Of Youth.

Nature Makes Merit, And Fortune Puts It To Work.

What Makes Us So Often Discontented With Those Who Transact Business For Us Is That They Almost Always Abandon The Interest Of Their Friends For The Interest Of The Business, Because They Wish To Have The Honor Of Succeeding In That Which They Have Undertaken.

A True Friend Is The Greatest Of All Blessings, And That Which We Take The Least Care Of All To Acquire.

In Misfortune We Often Mistake Dejection For Constancy; We Bear It Without Daring To Look On It; Like Cowards, Who Suffer Themselves To Be Murdered Without Resistance.

There Is No Better Proof Of A Man's Being Truly Good Than His Desiring To Be Constantly Under The Observation Of Good Men.

Too Great Haste To Repay An Obligation Is A Kind Of Ingratitude.

If It Were Not For Poetry, Few Men Would Ever Fall In Love.

Falling In Love

Bodily Labor Alleviates The Pains Of The Mind And From This Arises The Happiness Of The Poor

The Desire Which Urges Us To Deserve Praise Strengthens Our Good Qualities, And Praise Given To Wit, Valour, And Beauty, Tends To Increase Them.

The Constancy Of Sages Is Nothing But The Art Of Locking Up Their Agitation In Their Hearts.

Those Who Have The Most Cunning Affect All Their Lives To Condemn Cunning; That They May Make Use Of It On Some Great Occasion, And To Some Great End.

There Is A Sort Of Love Whose Very Excessiveness Prevents The Lover's Being Jealous.

The Head Does Not Know How To Play The Part Of The Heart For Long.

As Uncommon A Thing As True Love Is, It Is Yet Easier To Find Than True Friendship.

All Women Are Flirts, But Some Are Restrained By Shyness, And Others By Sense.

Humility Is Often Only Feigned Submission Which People Use To Render Others Submissive. It Is A Subterfuge Of Pride Which Lowers Itself In Order To Rise.

We Often Do Shallow Good In Order To Accomplish Evil With Impunity.

Sometimes We Lose Friends For Whose Loss Our Regret Is Greater Than Our Grief, And Others For Whom Our Grief Is Greater Than Our Regret.

Passion Very Often Makes The Wisest Men Fools, And Very Often Too Inspires The Greatest Fools With Wit.

True Love Is Like Ghosts, Which Everyone Talks About And Few Have Seen.

Marriage Is The Only War In Which You Sleep With The Enemy.

However Wicked Men May Be, They Do Not Dare Openly To Appear The Enemies Of Virtue, And When They Desire To Persecute Her They Either Pretend To Believe Her False Or Attribute Crimes To Her.

To Know How To Hide One's Ability Is Great Skill.

What Is Called Generosity Is Usually Only The Vanity Of Giving; We Enjoy The Vanity More Than The Thing Given.

Our Aversion To Lying Is Commonly A Secret Ambition To Make What We Say Considerable, And Have Every Word Received With A Religious Respect.

In The Misfortunes Of Our Best Friends We Always Find Something Not Altogether Displeasing To Us.

A Readiness To Believe Ill Of Others, Before We Have Duly Examined It, Is The Effect Of Laziness And Pride. We Are Eager To Find Aculprit, And Loath To Give Ourselves The Trouble Of Examining The Crime.

Gratitude, In Most Men, Is Only A Strong And Secret Hope Of Greater Favors.

A Wise Man Thinks It More Advantageous Not To Join The Battle Than To Win.

If One Acts Rightly And Honestly, It Is Difficult To Decide Whether It Is The Effect Of Integrity Or Skill.

In Love Deceit Almost Always Outstrips Distrust.

It Is Most Difficult To Speak When We Are Ashamed Of Being Silent.

There Is At Least As Much Eloquence In The Voice, Eyes, And Air Of A Speaker As In His Choice Of Words.

Weakness Of Character Is The Only Defect Which Cannot Be Amended.

Strength And Weakness Of Mind Are Misnomers; They Are Really Nothing But The Good Or Bad Health Of Our Bodily Organs.

Reconciliation With Our Enemies Is Simply A Desire To Better Our Condition, A Weariness Of War, Or The Fear Of Some Unlucky Thing From Occurring.

The Great Interests Of Man: Air And Light, The Joy Of Having A Body, The Voluptuousness Of Looking.

The Desire Of Appearing Clever Often Prevents Our Becoming So.

The Passions Possess A Certain Injustice And Self Interest Which Makes It Dangerous To Follow Them, And In Reality We Should Distrust Them Even When They Appear Most Trustworthy.

It Is Praiseworthy Even To Attempt A Great Action.

The Temperament That Produces A Talent For Little Things Is The Opposite Of That Required For Great Ones.

We Do Not Praise Others, Ordinarily, But In Order To Be Praised Ourselves.

What Renders Us So Changeable In Our Friendship Is, That It Is Difficult To Know The Qualities Of The Soul, But Easy To Know Those Of The Mind.

We Are Inconsolable At Being Deceived By Our Enemies And Being Betrayed By Our Friends, Yet We Are Often Content In Be Being Treated Like That By Our Own Selves.

The Art Of Putting Into Play Mediocre Qualities Often Begets More Reputation Than Is Achieved By True Merit.

The Passions Often Engender Their Contraries.

What Makes Lovers Never Tire Of One Another Is That They Talk Always About Themselves.

If We Resist Our Passions, It Is More Due To Their Weakness Than Our Strength.

A Man Is Ridiculous Less Through The Characteristics He Has Than Through Those He Affects To Have.

Characteristics

There Are People Who In Spite Of Their Merit Disgust Us And Others Who Please Us In Spite Of Their Faults.

Philosophy Finds It An Easy Matter To Vanquish Past And Future Evils, But The Present Are Commonly Too Hard For It.

A Man For Whom Accident Discovers Sense, Is Not A Rational Being. A Man Only Is So Who Understands, Who Distinguishes, Who Tests It.

Our Wisdom Lies As Much At The Mercy Of Fortune As Our Possessions Do.

What Is Called Liberality Is Often Merely The Vanity Of Giving.

Envy Is More Incapable Of Reconciliation Than Hatred Is.

The Blindness Of Men Is The Most Dangerous Effect Of Their Pride; It Seems To Nourish And Augment It; It Deprives Them Of Knowledge Of Remedies Which Can Solace Their Miseries And Can Cure Their Faults.

You Are Never So Easily Fooled As When Trying To Fool Someone Else.

Familiarity Is A Suspension Of Almost All The Laws Of Civility, Which Libertinism Has Introduced Into Society Under The Notion Of Ease.

The Clemency Of Princes Is Often But Policy To Win The Affections Of The People.

We Make Promises To The Extent That We Hope-and Keep Them To The Extent That We Fear.

Jealousy Is The Greatest Of All Evils, And The One That Arouses The Least Pity In The Person Who Causes It.

The Rust Of Business Is Sometimes Polished Off In A Camp; But Never In A Court.

Gracefulness Is To The Body What Understanding Is To The Mind.

Were We Faultless, We Would Not Derive Such Satisfaction From Remarking The Faults Of Others.

Gallantry Of Mind Consists In Saying Flattering Things In An Agreeable Manner.

Οur Own Distrust Somewhat Justifies The Deceit Of Others.

There Are Two Sorts Of Constancy In Love One Arises From Continually Discovering In The Loved Person New Subjects For Love, The Other Arises From Our Making A Merit Of Being Constant.

Thinkers Think And Doers Do. But Until The Thinkers Do And The Doers Think, Progress Will Be Just Another Word In The Already Overburdened Vocabulary By Sense.

In The Human Heart One Generation Of Passions Follows Another; From The Ashes Of One Springs The Spark Of The Next.

Extreme Boredom Provides Its Own Antidote.

Many Young Persons Believe Themselves Natural When They Are Only Impolite And Coarse.

A Fool Has Not Material Enough To Be Good. [fr., Un Sot N'a Pas Assez D'etoffe Pour Etre Bon.]

Whatever Ignominy Or Disgrace We Have Incurred, It Is Almost Always In Our Power To Reestablish Our Reputation.

To Safeguard One's Health At The Cost Of Too Strict A Diet Is A Tiresome Illness, Indeed.

Old Men Delight In Giving Good Advice As A Consolation For The Fact That They Can No Longer Set Bad Examples.

The Mind Is Always The Patsy Of The Heart.

Death, Like The Sun, Cannot Be Looked At Steadily.

The Gratitude Of Most Men Is But A Secret Desire Of Receiving Greater Benefits.

One Of The Greatest And Also The Commonest Of Faults Is For Men To Believe That, Because They Never Hear Their Shortcomings Spoken Of, Or Read About Them In Cold Print, Others Can Have No Knowledge Of Them. Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, The Reflections Of Lichtenberg We Are Often More Agreeable Through Our Faults Than Our Good Qualities.

Our Minds Are Lazier Than Our Bodies.

Our Actions Seem To Have Their Lucky And Unlucky Stars, To Which A Great Part Of That Blame And That Commendation Is Due Which Is Given To The Actions Themselves.

Neither Love Nor Fire Can Subsist Without Perpetual Motion; Both Cease To Live So Soon As They Cease To Hope, Or To Fear.

Perpetual Motion

Clemency, Which We Make A Virtue Of, Proceeds Sometimes From Vanity, Sometimes From Indolence, Often From Fear, And Almost Always From A Mixture Of All Three.

It's Easier To Know People In General Than One Person In Particular

However Great The Advantages Given Us By Nature, It Is Not She Alone, But Fortune With Her, Which Makes Heroes.

Our Probity Is Not Less At The Mercy Of Fortune Than Our Property.

The Fondness Or Indifference That The Philosophers Expressed For Life Was Merely A Preference Inspired By Their Self-love, And Will No More Bear Reasoning Upon Than The Relish Of The Palate Or The Choice Of Colors.

The Intellect Is Always Fooled By The Heart.

The Thing That Makes Our Friendships So Short And Changeable Is That The Qualities And Dispositions Of The Soul Are Very Hard To Know, And Those Of The Understanding And Wit Very Easy.

In Order To Succeed In The World People Do Their Upmost To Appear Successful.

We Promise According To Our Hopes And Perform According To Our Fears.

Indolence, Languid As It Is, Often Masters Both Passions And Virtues.

Beautiful Coquettes Are Quacks Of Love.

We Only Acknowledge Small Faults In Order To Make It Appear That We Are Free From Great Ones.

Tis A Sort Of Coquetry To Boast That We Never Coquet.

Those Who Give Too Much Attention To Trifling Things Become Generally Incapable Of Great Ones.

Every One Complains Of A Poor Memory, No One Of A Weak Judgment.

The Pleasure Of Love Is In The Loving; And There Is More Joy In The Passion One Feels Than In That Which One Inspires.

Cunning And Treachery Are The Offspring Of Incapacity.

Innocence Is Lucky If It Finds The Same Protection As Guilt

As We Grow Older, We Increase In Folly--and In Wisdom.

Sometimes In Life Situations Develop That Only The Half-crazy Can Get Out Of.

As It Is The Characteristic Of Great Wits To Say Much In Few Words, So Small Wits Seem To Have The Gift Of Speaking Much And Saying Nothing.

The Courage Of A Great Many Men, And The Virtue Of A Great Many Women, Are The Effect Of Vanity, Shame, And Especially A Suitabletemperament.

The Trust That We Put In Ourselves Makes Us Feel Trust In Others.

We Confess To Little Faults Only To Persuade Ourselves We Have No Great Ones.

Our Desires Always Disappoint Us; For Though We Meet With Something That Gives Us Satisfaction, Yet It Never Thoroughly Answers Our Expectation. [however Disappointment Can Always Be Removed If We Remember It Could Have Turned Out Worse.]

Those Who Are Overreached By Our Cunning Are Far From Appearing To Us As Ridiculous As We Appear To Ourselves When The Cunning Of Others Has Overreached Us.

The Man Who Leaves A Woman Best Pleased With Herself Is The One Whom She Will Soonest Wish To See.

Plenty Of People Want To Be Pious, But No One Yearns To Be Humble.

We Should Often Feel Ashamed Of Our Best Actions If The World Could See All The Motives Which Produced Them.

Happy People Rarely Correct Their Faults; They Consider Themselves Vindicated, Since Fortune Endorses Their Evil Ways.

The Desire To Seem Clever Often Keeps Us From Being So.

Our Enemies' Opinion Of Us Comes Closer To The Truth Than Our Own.

We Sometimes Imagine We Hate Flattery, But We Only Hate The Way We Are Flattered.

There Is Real Love Just As There Are Real Ghosts; Every Person Speaks Of It, Few Persons Have Seen It.

Some People Are Like Popular Songs That You Only Sing For A Short Time.

Folly Pursues Us At All Periods Of Our Lives. If Someone Seems Wise It Is Only Because His Follies Are Proportionate To His Age And Fortune.

We Do Not Lack Strength So Much As The Will To Use It; And Very Often Our Imagining That Things Are Impossible Is Nothing But An Excuse Of Our Own Contriving, To Reconcile Ourselves To Our Own Idleness.

A Man Cannot Please Long Who Has Only One Kind Of Wit.

Our Good Qualities Expose Us More To Hatred And Persecution Than All The Ill We Do.

It Is More Often From Pride Than From Ignorance That We Are So Obstinately Opposed To Current Opinions; We Find The First Places Taken, And We Do Not Want To Be The Last.

It Is A Common Fault Never To Be Satisfied With Our Fortune, Nor Dissatisfied With Our Understanding.

Nature Has Concealed At The Bottom Of Our Minds Talents And Abilities Of Which We Are Not Aware.

There Are Some Faults Which, When Well Managed, Make A Greater Figure Than Virtue Itself.

In Friendship As Well As Love, Ignorance Very Often Contributes More To Our Happiness Than Knowledge.

There Is No Accident So Unfortunate But Wise Men Will Make Some Advantage Of It, Nor Any So Entirely Fortunate But Fools May Turn It To Their Own Prejudice.

We Like To Read Others But We Do Not Like To Be Read.

Understanding Others

In Growing Old, We Become More Foolish - And More Wise.

The Hate Of Favourites Is Only A Love Of Favour. The Envy Of Not Possessing It, Consoles And Softens Its Regrets By The Contempt It Evinces For Those Who Possess It, And We Refuse Them Our Homage, Not Being Able To Detract From Them What Attracts That Of The Rest Of The World.

Those Who Are Condemned To Death Affect Sometimes A Constancy And Contempt For Death Which Is Only The Fear Of Facing It; So That One May Say That This Constancy And Contempt Are To Their Mind What The Bandage Is To Their Eyes.

Happiness Does Not Consist In Things Themselves But In The Relish We Have Of Them.

What We Cut Off From Our Other Faults Is Very Often But So Much Added To Our Pride.

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 Are Some People Upon Whom Their Very Faults And Failings Sit Gracefully; And There Are Others Whose Very Excellencies And Accomplishments Do Not Become Them.

Consolation For Unhappiness Can Often Be Found In A Certain Satisfaction We Get From Looking Unhappy.

The Old Begin To Complain Of The Conduct Of The Young When They Themselves Are No Longer Able To Set A Bad Example.

Bravery In Simple Soldiers Is A Dangerous Trade, To Which They Have Bound Themselves To Get Their Livelihood.

A Man's Happiness Or Unhappiness Depends As Much On His Temperament As On His Destiny.

Why Can We Remember The Tiniest Detail That Has Happened To Us, And Not Remember How Many Times We Have Told It To The Same Person.

We Give Advice, We Do Not Inspire Conduct.

We Love Everything On Our Own Account; We Even Follow Our Own Taste And Inclination When We Prefer Our Friends To Ourselves; And Yet It Is This Preference Alone That Constitutes True And Perfect Friendship.

The Height Of Cleverness Is To Be Able To Conceal It.

We Bear, All Of Us, The Misfortunes Of Other People With Heroic Constancy.

It Is Oftener By The Estimation Of Our Own Feelings That We Exaggerate The Good Qualities Of Others Than By Their Merit, And When We Praise Them We Wish To Attract Their Praise.

We Only Confess Our Little Faults To Persuade People That We Have No Big Ones.

Keeping Secrets

Love's Greatest Miracle Is The Curing Of Coquetry.

Gratitude Is Merely The Secret Hope Of Further Favors.

We Frequently Are Troublesome To Others, When We Think It Impossible For Us Ever To Be So.

A Man, In Order To Establish Himself In The World, Does Everything He Can To Appear Established There.

We Have No Patience With Other People's Vanity Because It Is Offensive To Our Own.

We Cannot Possibly Imagine The Variety Of Contradictions In Every Heart.

There Are Very Few People Who Are Not Ashamed Of Having Been In Love When They No Longer Love Each Other.

It Is Harder To Hide The Feelings We Have Than To Feign The Ones We Do Not Have.

Nature Seems At Each Man's Birth To Have Marked Out The Bounds Of His Virtues And Vices, And To Have Determined How Good Or How Wicked That Man Shall Be Capable Of Being.

Men Would Not Live In Society Long If They Were Not Each Others Dupes.

If We Did Not Have Pride, We Would Not Complain Of It In Others.

If One Judges Love According To The Greatest Part Of The Effects It Produces, It Would Appear To Resemble Rather Hatred Than Kindness.

In Their Early Passions Women Are In Love With The Lover, Later They Are In Love With Love.

The Sicknesses Of The Soul Have Their Ups And Downs Like Those Of The Body; What We Take To Be A Cure Is Most Often Merely A Respite Or Change Of Disease.

Few Are Sufficiently Wise To Prefer Censure Which Is Useful To Praise Which Is Treacherous.

Commonplace Minds Usually Condemn What Is Beyond The Reach Of Their Understanding.

Innocence Does Not Find Near So Much Protection As Guilt.

In Great Affairs We Ought To Apply Ourselves Less To Creating Chances Than To Profiting From Those That Offer.

We Are Never So Easily Deceived As When We Imagine We Are Deceiving Others.

Deceiving Others

The Sure Way To Be Cheated Is To Think One's Self More Cunning Than Others.

However Glorious An Action In Itself, It Ought Not To Pass For Great If It Be Not The Effect Of Wisdom And Intention.

There Are Very Few Things Impossible In Themselves; And We Do Not Want Means To Conquer Difficulties So Much As Application And Resolution In The Use Of Means.

Only Great Men Have Great Faults.

The Grace Of Novelty And The Length Of Habit, Though So Very Opposite To One Another, Yet Agree In This, That They Both Alike Keepus From Discovering The Faults Of Our Friends.

A Man's Worth Has Its Season, Like Fruit.

Our Actions Are Like The Terminations Of Verses, Which We Rhyme As We Please.

There Are Good Marriages, But There Are No Delightful Ones.

There Are Women Who Never Had An Intrigue; But There Are Scarce Any Who Never Had But One.

A Wise Man Should Order His Interests, And Set Them All In Their Proper Places. This Order Is Often Troubled By Greed, Which Putsus Upon Pursuing So Many Things At Once That, In Eagerness For Matters Of Less Consideration, We Grasp At Trifles, And Let Go Things Of Greater Value.

The Gallantry Of The Mind Consists In Agreeable Flattery.

A Man May Be Sharper Than Another, But Not Than All Others.

Envy Is More Irreconcilable Than Hatred.

Neither The Sun Nor Death Can Be Looked At Steadily.

Humility Is Often Only A Feigned Submissiveness By Which Men Hope To Bring Other People To Submit To Them; It Is A More Calculated Sort Of Pride.

Even The Most Disinterested Love Is, After All, But A Kind Of Bargain, In Which Self-love Always Proposes To Be The Gainer One Wayor Another.

We Never Desire Strongly, What We Desire Rationally.

A Man's Wits Are Better Employed In Bearing Up Under The Misfortunes That Lie Upon Him At Present Than In Foreseeing Those That May Come Upon Him Hereafter.

Being A Blockhead Is Sometimes The Best Security Against Being Cheated By A Man Of Wit.

It May Be Said That The Vices Await Us In The Journey Of Life Like Hosts With Whom We Must Successively Lodge; And I Doubt Whether Experience Would Make Us Avoid Them If We Were To Travel The Same Road A Second Time.

Humility Is Often Merely Feigned Submissiveness Assumed In Order To Subject Others, An Artifice Of Pride Which Stoops To Conquer, And Although Pride Has A Thousand Ways Of Transforming Itself It Is Never So Well Disguised And Able To Take People In As When Masquerading As Humility.

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.

One Kind Of Flirtation Is To Boast We Never Flirt.

Self-love Increases Or Diminishes For Us The Good Qualities Of Our Friends, In Proportion To The Satisfaction We Feel With Them; And We Judge Of Their Merit By The Manner In Which They Act Towards Us.

Hope Is The Last Thing That Dies In Man; And Though It Be Exceedingly Deceitful, Yet It Is Of This Good Use To Us, That While We Are Traveling Through Life It Conducts Us In An Easier And More Pleasant Way To Our Journey's End.

However Evil Men May Be They Dare Not Be Openly Hostile To Virtue, And So When They Want To Attack It They Pretend To Find It Spurious , Or Impute Crimes To It.

Passion Makes Idiots Of The Cleverest Men, And Makes The Biggest Idiots Clever.

The Surest Proof Of Being Endowed With Noble Qualities Is To Be Free From Envy.

Men Never Desire Anything Very Eagerly Which They Desire Only By The Dictates Of Reason.

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