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Fancy Sets The Value On The Gifts Of Fortune.

-Francois De La Rochefoucauld

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Fancy Sets The Value

Francois De La Rochefoucauld

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Fancy Sets The Value On The Gifts Of Fortune.

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More From Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Renewed Friendships Require More Care Than Those That Have Never Been Broken.

For The Credit Of Virtue We Must Admit That The Greatest Misfortunes Of Men Are Those Into Which They Fall Through Their Crimes.

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

The Measure Of Great Men Should Always Be Measured By The Means They Have Used To Acquire It.

Female Gossips Are Generally Actuated By Active Ignorance.

Some People Displease With Merit, And Others' Very Faults And Defects Are Pleasing.

The Height Of Ability In The Least Able Consists In Knowing How To Submit To The Good Leadership Of Others.

Politeness Of Mind Consists In Thinking Chaste And Refined Thoughts.

Sobriety Is Concern For One's Health - Or Limited Capacity.

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.

Moderation Is Represented As A Virtue In Order To Restrain The Ambition Of Great Men, And To Console Those Of A Meaner Condition In Their Lesser Merit And Fortune.

All The Passions Are Nothing Else Than Different Degrees Of Heat And Cold Of The Blood.

The Name And Pretense Of Virtue Is As Serviceable To Self-interest As Are Real Vices.

It Is Far Better To Be Deceived Than Undeceived By Those Whom We Tenderly Love.

Truth Is The Foundation And The Reason Of The Perfection Of Beauty, For Of Whatever Stature A Thing May Be, It Cannot Be Beautiful-and Perfect, Unless It Be Truly What It Should Be, And Possess Truly All That It Should Have.

Few Things Are Needful To Make The Wise Man Happy, But Nothing Satisfies The Fool; - And This Is The Reason Why So Many Of Mankind Are Miserable.

There May Be Talent Without Position, But There Is No Position Without Some Kind Of Talent.

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.

We Arrive At The Various Stages Of Life Quite As Novices.

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.

We Are Easily Comforted For The Misfortunes Of Our Friends, When Those Misfortunes Give Us An Occasion Of Expressing Our Affection And Solicitude.

He Who Lives Without Folly Isn't So Wise As He Thinks.

Fortune Cures Us Of Many Faults That Reason Could Not.

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

The Fame Of Great Men Ought To Be Judged Always By Their Big, Fancy Names.

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

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

Opportunity Makes Us Known To Others, But More To Ourselves.

People Would Never Fall In Love If They Hadn't Heard Love Talked About.

Self-love Is More Cunning Than The Most Cunning Man In The World.

Truth Has Scarce Done So Much Good In The World As The False Appearances Of It Have Done Hurt.

The Defects Of The Mind, Like Those Of The Face, Grow Worse With Age.

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

Eloquence: Saying The Proper Thing And Stopping.

Silence Is The Best Security To The Man Who Distrusts Himself.

We Often Shed Tears That Deceive Ourselves After Deceiving Others.

Deceiving Others

We Often In Our Misfortunes Take That For Constancy And Patience Which Is Only Dejection Of Mind; We Suffer Without Daring To Holdup Our Heads, Just As Cowards Let Themselves Be Knocked On The Head Because They Have Not Courage To Strike Back.

A Woman Is Faithful To Her First Lover For A Long Time - Unless She Happens To Take A Second.

We Seldom Praise Anyone In Good Earnest, Except Such As Admire Us.

In Love We Often Doubt What We Most Believe.

A Man Convinced Of His Own Merit Will Accept Misfortune As An Honor, For Thus Can He Persuade Others, As Well As Himself, That He Is A Worthy Target For The Arrows Of Fate.

Vices Are Ingredients Of Virtues Just As Poisons Are Ingredients Of Remedies. Prudence Mixes And Tempers Them And Uses Them Effectively Against Life's Ills.

Absence Abates A Moderate Passion And Intensifies A Great One - As The Wind Blows Out A Candle But Fans Fire Into Flame.

Nothing Prevents One From Appearing Natural As The Desire To Appear Natural.

Ideas Often Flash Across Our Minds More Complete Than We Could Make Them After Much Labor.

No Matter How Much Care We Put Into Hiding Our Passions Under The Appearances Of Devotion And Honor, They Can Always Be Seen To Peer Out Through These Covers.

It Is From A Weakness And Smallness Of Mind That Men Are Opinionated; And We Are Very Loath To Believe What We Are Not Able To Comprehend.

Sometimes We Think We Dislike Flattery, But It Is Only The Way It Is Done That We Dislike.

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.

Though Nature Be Ever So Generous, Yet Can She Not Make A Hero Alone. Fortune Must Contribute Her Part Too; And Till Both Concur, The Work Cannot Be Perfected.

The Reason We Bitterly Hate Those Who Deceive Us Is Because They Think They Are Cleverer Than We Are.

We Give Nothing So Freely As Advice.

We Are Nearer Loving Those Who Hate Us Than Those Who Love Us More Than We Wish.

Pride Has A Greater Share Than Goodness In The Reproofs We Give Other People For Their Faults; And We Chide Them Not So Much To Make Them Mend Those Faults As To Make Them Believe That We Ourselves Are Without Fault.

The Passions Do Very Often Give Birth To Others Of A Nature Most Contrary To Their Own. Thus Avarice Sometimes Brings Forth Prodigality, And Prodigality Avarice; A Man's Resolution Is Very Often The Effect Of Levity, And His Boldness That Of Cowardice And Fear.

Fancy Sets The Value On The Gifts Of Fortune.

Men Sometimes Think They Hate Flattery, But They Hate Only The Manner Of Flattering.

He Is A Truly Virtuous Man Who Wishes Always To Be Open To The Observation Of Honest Men.

There Are People Who, Like New Songs, Are In Vogue Only For A Time.

Humility Is Often A False Front We Employ To Gain Power Over Others.

Power Over Others

It Is Easier To Be Wise For Others Than For Ourselves.

Men And Things Have Each Their Proper Perspective; To Judge Rightly Of Some It Is Necessary To See Them Near, Of Others We Can Never Judge Rightly But At A Distance.

Jealousy Is In Some Measure Just And Reasonable, Since It Merely Aims At Keeping Something That Belongs To Us Or We Think Belongsto Us, Whereas Envy Is A Frenzy That Cannot Bear Anything That Belongs To Others.

The Mind Is Always The Patsy Of The Heart.

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

Nothing Is So Capable Of Diminishing Self-love As The Observation That We Disapprove At One Time What We Approve At Another.

Nothing Is Rarer Than Real Goodness.

One Kind Of Happiness Is To Know Exactly At What Point To Be Miserable.

Idleness And Constancy Fix The Mind To What It Finds Easy And Agreeable. This Habit Always Confines And Cramps Up Our Knowledge; And No One Has Ever Taken The Trouble To Stretch And Carry His Understanding As Far As It Could Go.

There Are Few People More Convinced Of Their Own Genius Than Those Who Complain Of How Stupid They Are.

As Long As We Love, We Can Forgive.

One Can No More Look Steadily At Death Than At The Sun.

Self-love, As It Happens To Be Well Or Ill Conducted, Constitutes Virtue And Vice.

Envy Is Destroyed By True Friendship, As Coquetry By True Love.

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.

Flattery Is A Kind Of Bad Money, To Which Our Vanity Gives Us Currency.

Our Hopes, Often Though They Deceive Us, Lead Us Pleasantly Along The Path Of Life.

Friendship Is Only A Reciprocal Conciliation Of Interests, And An Exchange Of Good Offices; It Is A Species Of Commerce Out Of Which Self-love Always Expects To Gain Something.

The Surest Way To Be Deceived Is To Consider Oneself Cleverer Than Others.

The Moderation Of Men In The Most Exalted Fortunes Is A Desire To Be Thought Above Those Things That Have Raised Them So High.

No Man Is Clever Enough To Know All The Evil He Does.

The Appearances Of Goodness And Merit Often Meet With A Greater Reward From The World Than Goodness And Merit Themselves.

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

Behind Many Acts That Are Thought Ridiculous There Lie Wise And Weighty Motives.

Hope, Deceiving As It Is, Serves At Least To Lead Us To The End Of Our Lives By An Agreeable Route.

Our Minds Are As Much Given To Laziness As Our Bodies.

Nothing Is Rarer Than True Good Nature; They Who Are Reputed To Have It Are Generally Only Pliant Or Weak.

Before We Passionately Desire A Thing, We Should Examine The Happiness Of Its Possessor.

The Only Thing That Should Astonish Us Is That Anything Can Yet Astonish Us.

We Give Advice, But We Cannot Give The Wisdom To Profit By It.

Those Who Occupy Their Minds With Small Matters, Generally Become Incapable Of Greatness.

Nothing Should Lessen Our Satisfaction With Ourselves As Much As When We Notice That We Disapprove Of Something At One Time That We Approve Of At Another Time.

Nothing Hinders A Thing From Being Natural So Much As The Straining Ourselves To Make It Seem So.

The Only Security Is Courage.

We Seldom Find People Ungrateful So Long As It Is Thought We Can Serve Them.

Ungrateful People

There Are Crimes Which Become Innocent And Even Glorious Through Their Splendor, Number And Excess.

It Is With Certain Good Qualities As With The Senses; Those Who Have Them Not Can Neither Appreciate Nor Comprehend Them In Others.

Moderation Is Caused By The Fear Of Exciting The Envy And Contempt Which Those Merit Who Are Intoxicated With Their Good Fortune; It Is A Vain Display Of Our Strength Of Mind, And In Short The Moderation Of Men At Their Greatest Height Is Only A Desire To Appear Greater Than Their Fortune.

Gratitude Is Like Credit; It Is The Backbone Of Our Relations; Frequently We Pay Our Debts Not Because Equity Demands That We Should, But To Facilitate Future Loans.

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.

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

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.

Imagination Could Never Invent The Number Of Different Contradictions That Exist Innately In Each Person's Heart.

There Are No Accidents So Unlucky But The Prudent May Draw Some Advantage From Them.

On Why I Don't Trust Democracy Without Extremely Powerful Systems Of Accountability And Recall What Seems To Be Generosity Is Often Only Disguised Ambition - Which Despises Small Interests To Gain Great Ones.

For Most Men The Love Of Justice Is Only The Fear Of Suffering Injustice.

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

A Woman Often Thinks She Regrets The Lover, When She Only Regrets The Love.

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

Everyone Complains Of His Memory, And Nobody Complains Of His Judgment.

Fortune Converts Everything To The Advantage Of Her Favorites.

The Same Strength Of Character Which Helps A Man Resist Love, Helps To Make It More Violent And Lasting Too. People Of Unsettled Minds Are Always Driven About With Passions, But Never Absolutely Filled With Any.

If It Were Not For The Company Of Fools, A Witty Man Would Often Be Greatly At A Loss.

The Greatest Of All Gifts Is The Power To Estimate Things At Their True Worth

Everyone Agrees That A Secret Should Be Kept Intact, But Everyone Does Not Agree As To The Nature And Importance Of Secrecy. Too Often We Consult Ourselves As To What We Should Say, What We Should Leave Unsaid. There Are Few Permanent Secrets, And The Scruple Against Revealing Them Will Not Last Forever.

What Makes Vanity So Insufferable To Us, Is That It Hurts Our Own.

There Is Merit Without Rank, But There Is No Rank Without Some Merit.

Affected Simplicity Is An Elegant Imposture.

Idleness And Fear Keeps Us In The Path Of Duty, But Our Virtue Often Gets The Praise.

It Is Worth Nothing To Be Young Without Being Beautiful, Nor To Be Beautiful Without Being Young.

The Vivacity That Augments With Years Is Not Far From Folly.

The Desire Of Talking Of Ourselves, And Showing Those Faults We Do Not Mind Having Seen, Makes Up A Good Part Of Our Sincerity.

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.

It Is Only Persons Of Firmness That Can Have Real Gentleness. Those Who Appear Gentle Are, In General, Only A Weak Character, Which Easily Changes Into Asperity.

Imagination Does Not Enable Us To Invent As Many Different Contradictions As There Are By Nature In Every Heart.

Great And Glorious Events Which Dazzle The Beholder Are Represented By Politicians As The Outcome Of Grand Designs Whereas They Are Usually Products Of Temperaments And Passions.

Perfect Courage And Utter Cowardice Are Two Extremes Which Rarely Occur.

Our Minds Are Lazier Than Our Bodies.

We Should Gain More By Letting The World See What We Are Than By Trying To Seem What We Are Not.

Nature Creates Ability; Luck Provides It With Opportunity.

Our Merit Gains Us The Esteem Of The Virtuous-our Star That Of The Public.

What Makes The Pain We Feel From Shame And Jealousy So Cutting Is That Vanity Can Give Us No Assistance In Bearing Them.

Whatever Discoveries We May Have Made In The Regions Of Self-love, There Still Remain Many Unknown Lands.

We Think Very Few People Sensible, Except Those Who Are Of Our Opinion.

We Had Better Appear What We Are, Than Affect To Appear What We Are Not.

The Whimsicalness Of Our Own Humor Is A Thousand Times More Fickle And Unaccountable Than What We Blame So Much In Fortune.

Moderation Is A Fear Of Falling Into That Envy And Contempt Which Those Who Grow Giddy With Their Good Fortune Quite Justly Draw Upon Themselves. It Is A Vain Boasting Of The Greatness Of Our Mind.

We Would Rather See Those To Whom We Do Good, Than Those Who Do Good To Us.

The Truest Comparison We Can Make Of Love Is To Liken It To A Fever; We Have No More Power Over The One Than The Other, Either As To Its Violence Or Duration.

We Rarely Think People Have Good Sense Unless They Agree With Us.

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

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

We Never Desire Strongly, What We Desire Rationally.

Very Few People Are Acquainted With Death. They Undergo It, Commonly, Not So Much Out Of Resolution As Custom And Insensitivity; And Most Men Die Because They Cannot Help It.

Affected Simplicity Is A Subtle Imposture.

It Is Given To Few Persons To Keep This Secret Well. Those Who Lay Down Rules Too Often Break Them, And The Safest We Are Able To Give Is To Listen Much, To Speak Little, And To Say Nothing That That Will Ever Give Ground Or Regret.

A Great Many Men's Gratitude Is Nothing But A Secret Desire To Hook In More Valuable Kindnesses Hereafter.

Nothing Is More Ridiculous In Old People That Were Once Good-looking, Than To Forget That They Are Not So Still.

Those Whom The World Has Delighted To Honor Have Oftener Been Influenced In Their Doings By Ambition And Vanity Than By Patriotism.

If There Be A Love Pure And Free From The Admixture Of Our Other Passions, It Is That Which Lies Hidden In The Bottom Of Our Heart, And Which We Know Not Ourselves.

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

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

We Often Brag That We Are Never Bored With Ourselves, And Are So Vain As Never To Think Ourselves Bad Company.

Virtue Would Not Make Such Advances If There Were Not A Little Vanity To Keep It Company.

Ridicule Dishonours More Than Dishonour.

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.

It Is A Great Act Of Cleverness To Be Able To Conceal One's Being Clever.

The Greatest Part Of Our Faults Are More Excusable Than The Methods That Are Commonly Taken To Conceal Them.

As One Grows Older, One Becomes Wiser And More Foolish.

It Is Easier To Fall In Love When You Are Out Of It Than To Get Out Of It When You Are In.

Falling In Love

It Is Necessary, In Order To Know Things Well, To Know The Particulars Of Them; And These, Being Infinite, Make Our Knowledge Eversuperficial And Imperfect.

We Are Sometimes As Different From Ourselves As We Are From Others.

Self Improvement

The Only Real Voyage Of Discovery Consists Not In Seeking New Landscapes But In Having New Eyes. The Glory Of Great Men Should Always Be Measured By The Means They Have Used To Acpuire It.

No Men Are Oftener Wrong Than Those That Can Least Bear To Be So.

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.

One Man May Be More Cunning Than Another, But No One Can Be More Cunning Than All The World.

It Is As Proper To Have Pride In Oneself As It Ridiculous To Show It To Others.

Hope Is The Last Thing That Dies In Man.

Weakness Is More Opposed To Virtue Than Is Vice.

Men May Boast Of Their Great Actions; But They Are More Often The Effects Of Chance Than Of Design.

Moderation Resembles Temperance. We Are Not So Unwilling To Eat More, As Afraid Of Doing Ourselves Harm By It.

A Man Seldom Finds People Unthankful, As Long As He Remains In A Condition Of Benefiting Them Further.

It Is Easier To Understand Mankind In General Than Any Individual Man.

Constancy In Love Is Of Two Sorts: One Is The Effect Of New Excellencies That Are Always Presenting Themselves Afresh, And Attractour Affections Continually; The Other Is Only From A Point Of Honor, And A Taking Of Pride Not To Change.

What Men Have Called Friendship Is Only A Social Arrangement, A Mutual Adjustment Of Interests, An Interchange Of Services Given And Received; It Is, In Sum, Simply A Business From Which Those Involved Propose To Derive A Steady Profit For Their Own Self-love.

There Are Heroes In Evil As Well As In Good.

It Appears That Nature Has Hid At The Bottom Of Our Hearts Talents And Abilities Unknown To Us. It Is Only The Passions That Have The Power Of Bringing Them To Light, And Sometimes Give Us Views More True And More Perfect Than Art Could Possibly Do.

The Distempers Of The Soul Have Their Relapses, As Many And As Dangerous As Those Of The Body; And What We Take For A Perfect Cureis Generally Either An Abatement Of The Same Disease Or The Changing Of That For Another.

Satire Is At Once The Most Agreeable And Most Dangerous Of Mental Qualities. It Always Pleases When It Is Refined, But We Always Fear Those Who Use It Too Much; Yet Satire Should Be Allowed When Unmixed With Spite, And When The Person Satirized Can Join In The Satire.

Selfishness Is The Grand Moving Principle Of Nine-tenths Of Our Actions.

It Is With True Love As It Is With Ghosts; Everyone Talks About It, But Few Have Seen It.

Great Names Abase, Instead Of Elevating, Those Who Do Not Know How To Bear Them.

We Would Frequently Be Ashamed Of Our Good Deeds If People Saw All Of The Motives That Produced Them.

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

There Are Few People Who Are More Often In The Wrong Than Those Who Cannot Endure To Be So.

When Our Vices Desert Us, We Flatter Ourselves That We Are Deserting Our Vices.

Truth Does Less Good In The World Than Its Appearances Do Harm.

Good Taste Comes More From The Judgment Than From The Mind.

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.]

We Seldom Find Any Person Of Good Sense, Except Those Who Share Our Opinions.

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

Nothing Is Impossible; There Are Ways That Lead To Everything, And If We Had Sufficient Will We Should Always Have Sufficient Means. It Is Often Merely For An Excuse That We Say Things Are Impossible.

Few Men Know All The Ill They Do.

Generally Speaking, We Would Make A Good Bargain By Renouncing All The Good That People Say Of Us, Upon Condition They Would Say No Ill.

It Is Pointless For A Woman To Be Young Unless Pretty, Or To Be Pretty Unless Young.

Conceit Causes More Conversation Than Wit.

A Man Is Sometimes Better Off Deceived About The One He Loves, Than Undeceived.

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.

Virtue Would Go Far If Vanity Did Not Keep It Company.

Jealousy Is Nothing More Than A Fear Of Abandonment

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