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Humility Is Often Only The Putting On Of A Submissiveness By Which Men Hope To Bring Other People To Submit To Them; It Is A Morecalculated Sort Of Pride, Which Debases Itself With A Design Of Being Exalted; And Though This Vice Transform Itself Into A Thousand Several Shapes, Yet The Disguise Is Never More Effectual Nor More Capable Of Deceiving The World Than When Concealed Under A Form Of Humility.

-Francois De La Rochefoucauld

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Humility Is Often Only

Francois De La Rochefoucauld

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Humility Is Often Only The Putting On Of A Submissiveness By Which Men Hope To Bring Other People To Submit To Them; It Is A Morecalculated Sort Of Pride, Which Debases Itself With A Design Of Being Exalted; And Though This Vice Transform Itself Into A Thousand Several Shapes, Yet The Disguise Is Never More Effectual Nor More Capable Of Deceiving The World Than When Concealed Under A Form Of Humility.

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Men Have Written In The Most Convincing Manner To Prove That Death Is No Evil, And This Opinion Has Been Confirmed On A Thousand Celebrated Occasions By The Weakest Of Men As Well As By Heroes. Even So I Doubt Whether Any Sensible Person Has Ever Believed It, And The Trouble Men Take To Convince Others As Well As Themselves That They Do Shows Clearly That It Is No Easy Undertaking.

Female Gossips Are Generally Actuated By Active Ignorance.

It Is As Commendable To Think Well Of Oneself When Alone, As It Is Ridiculous To Speak Well Of Oneself Among Others.

The Mind Is Always The Patsy Of The Heart.

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

Nothing Is So Contagious As Example.

Gratitude Is Like The Good Faith Of Traders: It Maintains Commerce, And We Often Pay, Not Because It Is Just To Discharge Our Debts, But That We May More Readily Find People To Trust Us.

Kings Do With Men As With Pieces Of Money; They Give Them What Value They Please, And We Are Obliged To Receive Them At Their Current And Not At Their Real Value.

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

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

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

In All Professions Each Affects A Look And An Exterior To Appear What He Wishes The World To Believe That He Is. Thus We May Say That The Whole World Is Made Up Of Appearances.

The Mind Cannot Long Play The Heart's Role.

Some Disguised Deceits Counterfeit Truth So Perfectly That Not To Be Taken In By Them Would Be An Error Of Judgment.

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

Sometimes Accidents Happen In Life From Which We Have Need Of A Little Madness To Extricate Ourselves Successfully

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

Only The Contemptible Fear Contempt.

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

We Often See Malefactors, When They Are Led To Execution, Put On Resolution And A Contempt Of Death Which, In Truth, Is Nothing Else But Fearing To Look It In The Face--so That This Pretended Bravery May Very Truly Be Said To Do The Same Good Office To Their Mind That The Blindfold Does To Their Eyes.

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.

We Endeavor To Make A Virtue Of The Faults We Are Unwilling To Correct.

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

It Seems That Nature, Which Has So Wisely Disposed Our Bodily Organs With A View To Our Happiness, Has Also Bestowed On Us Pride, To Spare Us The Pain Of Being Aware Of Our Imperfections.

To Achieve Greatness One Should Live As If They Will Never Die.

We Often Select Envenomed Praise Which, By A Reaction Upon Those We Praise, Shows Faults We Could Not Have Shown By Other Means.

Some People Are So Extremely Whiffling And Inconsiderable That They Are As Far From Any Real Faults As From Substantial Virtues.

In The Human Heart There Is A Ceaseless Birth Of Passions, So That The Destruction Of One Is Almost Always The Establishment Of Another.

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.

The Happiness And Unhappiness Of Men Depends As Much On Their Ethics As On Fortune.

History Never Embraces More Than A Small Part Of Reality

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

Self Improvement

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.

Love Is To The Soul Of Him Who Loves, What The Soul Is To The Body Which It Animates.

There Are Some People Who Would Never Have Fallen In Love If They Had Not Heard There Was Such A Thing.

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

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.

There Is A Form Of Eminence Which Does Not Depend On Fate; It Is An Air Which Sets Us Apart And Seems To Prtend Great Things; It Is The Value Which We Unconsciously Attach To Ourselves; It Is The Quality Which Wins Us Deference Of Others; More Than Birth, Position, Or Ability, It Gives Us Ascendance.

To Be A Great Man It Is Necessary To Know How To Profit By The Whole Of Our Good Fortune.

Some Reproaches Praise; Some Praises Reproach.

The Man Whom No One Pleases Is Much More Unhappy Than The Man Who Pleases No One.

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

What We Call Generosity Is For The Most Part Only The Vanity Of Giving; And We Exercise It Because We Are More Fond Of That Vanity Than Of The Thing We Give.

There Are Many Predicaments In Life That One Must Be A Bit Crazy To Escape From.

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

Taste May Change, But Inclination Never.

Happiness Is In The Taste, And Not In The Things.

We Give Nothing So Freely As Advice.

Few People Have The Wisdom To Prefer The Criticism That Would Do Them Good, To The Praise That Deceives Them.

Whatever Pretended Causes We May Blame Our Afflictions Upon, It Is Often Nothing But Self-interest And Vanity That Produce Them.

When We Disclaim Praise, It Is Only Showing Our Desire To Be Praised A Second Time.

Men Are Not Only Prone To Forget Benefits; They Even Hate Those Who Have Obliged Them, And Cease To Hate Those Who Have Injured Them. The Necessity Of Revenging An Injury, Or Of Recompensing A Benefit Seems A Slavery To Which They Are Unwilling To Submit.

We Feel Good And Ill Only In Proportion To Our Self-love.

The Less You Trust Others, The Less You Will Be Deceived.

We Have Not Enough Strength To Follow All Our Reason.

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

We Are Never So Generous As When Giving Advice.

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

It Is Praiseworthy Even To Attempt A Great Action.

Usually We Praise Only To Be Praised.

The Reason Why Lovers And Their Mistresses Never Tire Of Being Together Is That They Are Always Talking Of Themselves. [fr., Ce Qui Fait Que Amants Et Les Maitresses Ne S'ennuient Point D'etre Ensemble; C'est Qu'ils Parlent Toujours D'eux Memes.]

There Is Only One Kind Of Love, But There Are A Thousand Imitations.

The Judgments Our Enemies Make About Us Come Nearer To The Truth Than Those We Make About Ourselves.

The Most Subtle Of Our Acts Is To Simulate Blindness For Snares That We Know Are Set For Us.

Fortunate Persons Hardly Ever Amend Their Ways: They Always Imagine That They Are In The Right When Fortune Upholds Their Bad Conduct.

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

Passion Often Makes Fools Of The Wisest Men And Gives The Silliest Wisdom.

The Breeding We Give Young People Is Ordinarily But An Additional Self-love, By Which We Make Them Have A Better Opinion Of Themselves.

Customary Use Of Artifice Is The Sign Of A Small Mind, And It Almost Always Happens That He Who Uses It To Cover One Spot Uncovers Himself In Another.

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

Treachery Is More Often The Effect Of Weakness Than Of A Formed Design.

Humility Is The Worst Form Of Conceit.

It Is Not Enough That We Should Succeed, But Our Friends Must Fail As Well.

Our Enemies Come Nearer The Truth In The Opinions They Form Of Us Than We Do In Our Opinion Of Ourselves.

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.

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

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

As Love Increases, Prudence Diminishes.

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.

People Always Complain About Their Memories, Never About Their Minds.

Second-rate Minds Usually Condemn Everything Beyond Their Grasp.

Positive Thinking

We Are Very Far From Always Knowing Our Own Wishes.

The Pleasure Of Love Is In Loving; We Are Happier In The Passion We Feel Than In What We Inspire.

We Frequently Do Good In Order To Enable Us To Do Evil Later With Impunity Exemption Of Punishment.

The First Lover Is Kept A Long While, When No Offer Is Made Of A Second.

If We Are To Judge Of Love By Its Consequences, It More Nearly Resembles Hatred Than Friendship.

Silence Is The Safest Course For Any Man To Adopt Who Distrust Himself.

The Qualities We Have Do Not Make Us So Ridiculous As Those Which We Affect To Have. [fr., On N'est Jamais Si Ridicule Par Les Qualites Que L'on A Que Par Celles Que L'on Affecte D'avoir.]

We Often Boast That We Are Never Bored; But Yet We Are So Conceited That We Do Not Perceive How Often We Bore Others.

It Is With An Old Love As It Is With Old Age A Man Lives To All The Miseries, But Is Dead To All The Pleasures.

To Establish Yourself In The World A Person Must Do All They Can To Appear Already Established.

We Acknowledge That We Should Not Talk Of Our Wives; But We Seem Not To Know That We Should Talk Still Less Of Ourselves.

There Is A Kind Of Love, The Excess Of Which Forbids Jealousy.

Hope Is The Last Thing That Dies In Man.

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.

The Truest Mark Of Being Born With Great Qualities Is To Be Born Without Envy.

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

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

Falling In Love

We Should Not Be Much Concerned About Faults We Have The Courage To Own.

A True Friend Is The Most Precious Of All Possessions And The One We Take The Least Thought About Acquiring.

There Is No Praise We Have Not Lavished Upon Prudence; And Yet She Cannot Assure To Us The Most Trifling Event.

Some Follies Are Caught, Like Contagious Diseases.

When Love Becomes Labored We Welcome An Act Of Infidelity Towards Ourselves To Free Us From Fidelity.

Old People Love To Give Good Advice; It Compensates Them For Their Inability To Set A Bad Example.

Inability To Love

What Is Perfectly True Is Perfectly Witty.

If We Had No Faults, We Would Not Derive So Much Pleasure From Noting Those Of Other People.

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

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

Moderation Is The Feebleness And Sloth Of The Soul, Whereas Ambition Is The Warmth And Activity Of It.

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

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

Sobriety Is Love Of Health, Or Inability To Eat Much.

There Are Few Good Women Who Do Not Tire Of Their Role.

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.

Man Only Blames Himself In Order That He May Be Praised.

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.

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

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

We Can Be More Clever Than One, But Not More Clever Than All.

We Are Much Mistaken If We Think That Men Are Always Brave From A Principle Of Valor, Or Women Chaste From A Principle Of Modesty.

We Are Better Pleased To See Those On Whom We Confer Benefits Than Those From Whom We Receive Them.

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

Envy Is More Irreconcilable Than Hatred.

We Forgive Just So Long As We Love.

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

We Are Never So Ridiculous Through What We Are As Through What We Pretend To Be.

One Is Never Fortunate Or As Unfortunate As One Imagines.

Nothing Is So Contagious As Example; Never Was There Any Considerable Good Or Ill Done That Does Not Produce Its Like. We Imitate Good Actions Through Emulation, And Had Ones Through A Malignity In Our Nature, Which Shame Conceals, And Example Sets At Liberty.

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

Sometimes There Are Accidents In Our Lives The Skillful Extrication From Which Demands A Little Folly.

Pity Is Often A Reflection Of Our Own Evils In The Ills Of Others. It Is A Delicate Foresight Of The Troubles Into Which We May Fall.

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

When The Soul Is Ruffled By The Remains Of One Passion, It Is More Disposed To Entertain A New One Than When It Is Entirely Curedand At Rest From All.

The Boldest Stroke And Best Act Of Friendship Is Not To Disclose Our Own Failings To A Friend, But To Show Him His Own.

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

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

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

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

Perfect Valor Is To Do, Without A Witness, All That We Could Do Before The Whole World.

Men Are Often So Foolish As To Boast And Value Themselves Upon Their Passions, Even Those That Are Most Vicious. But Envy Is A Passion So Full Of Cowardice And Shame That No One Every Ever Had The Confidence To Own It.

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

However Much We May Distrust Men's Sincerity, We Always Believe They Speak To Us More Sincerely Than To Others.

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

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.

Most Men Expose Themselves In Battle Enough To Save Their Honor, Few Wish To Do So More Than Sufficiently, Or Than Is Necessary To Make The Design For Which They Expose Themselves Succeed.

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

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.

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.

When We Are Unable To Find Tranquility Within Ourselves, It Is Useless To Seek It Elsewhere.

Whatever Pretext We May Give For Our Affections, Often It Is Only Interest And Vanity Which Cause Them.

Small Minds Are Much Distressed By Little Things. Great Minds See Them All But Are Not Upset By Them.

To Awaken A Man Who Is Deceived As To His Own Merit Is To Do Him As Bad A Turn As That Done To The Athenian Madman Who Was Happy In Believing That All The Ships Touching At The Port Belonged To Him.

We Often Pride Ourselves On Even The Most Criminal Passions, But Envy Is A Timid And Shamefaced Passion We Never Dare To Acknowledge.

We Rarely Ever Perceive Others As Being Sensible, Except For Those Who Agree With Us.

Our Envy Always Outlives The Felicity Of Its Object.

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.

The Principal Point Of Cleverness Is To Know How To Value Things Just As They Deserve.

Madmen And Fools See Everything Through The Medium Of Humor.

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

There Are Fine Things That Are More Brilliant When They Are Unfinished Than When Finished Too Much.

Jealousy Is Bred In Doubts. When Those Doubts Change Into Certainties, Then The Passion Either Ceases Or Turns Absolute Madness.

Repentance Is Not So Much Remorse For What We Have Done As The Fear Of The Consequences.

Sincerity Is A Certain Openness Of Heart. It Is To Be Found In Very Few, And What We Commonly Look Upon To Be So Is Only A Cunningsort Of Dissimulation, To Insinuate Ourselves Into The Confidence Of Others.

Of All Our Faults, The One That We Excuse Most Easily Is Idleness.

A Man Does Not Please Long When He Has Only Species Of Wit.

When The Philosophers Despised Riches, It Was Because They Had A Mind To Vindicate Their Own Merit, And Take Revenge Upon The Injustice Of Fortune By Vilifying Those Enjoyments Which She Had Not Given Them.

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

Deceiving Others

It Requires No Small Degree Of Ability To Know When To Conceal One's Ability.

There Are Persons Whose Only Merit Consists In Saying And Doing Stupid Things At The Right Time, And Who Ruin All If They Change Their Manners.

It Is No Tragedy To Do Ungrateful People Favors, But It Is Unbearable To Be Indebted To A Scoundrel.

Ungrateful People

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

All Our Qualities, Whether Good Or Bad, Are Unstable And Ambiguous, And Almost All Are At The Mery Of Chance.

Lovers, When They Are No Longer In Love, Find It Very Hard To Break Up.

Heat Of Blood Makes Young People Change Their Inclinations Often, And Habit Makes Old Ones Keep To Theirs A Great While.

Chance Corrects Us Of Many Faults That Reason Would Not Know How To Correct.

We Get So Much In The Habit Of Wearing Disguises Before Others That We Finally Appear Disguised Before Ourselves.

There Are Follies As Catching As Contagious Disorders.

Many Men Are Contemptuous Of Riches; Few Can Give Them Away.

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

Were We Perfectly Acquainted With The Object, We Should Never Passionately Desire It.

The Aversion To Lying Is Often A Hidden Ambition To Render Our Words Credible And Weighty, And To Attach A Religious Aspect To Our Conversation.

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

Not To Love Is In Love An Infallible Means Of Being Loved.

Only Great Men Have Great Faults.

What Seems To Be Generosity Is Often No More Than Disguised Ambition, Which Overlooks A Small Interest In Order To Secure A Great One.

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.

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

Power Over Others

The Intellect Is Always Fooled By The Heart.

Though Most Of The Friendships Of The World Ill Deserve The Name Of Friendships; Yet A Man May Make Use Of Them On Occasion, As Of A Traffic Whose Returns Are Uncertain, And In Which 'tis Usual To Be Cheated.

As Long As We Love, We Can Forgive.

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.

Men More Easily Renounce Their Interests Than Their Tastes.

A Respectable Man May Love Madly, But Not Foolishly.

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

He That Fancies Such A Sufficiency In Himself That He Can Live Without All The World Is Greatly Mistaken; But He That Imagines Himself So Necessary That Other People Cannot Live Without Him Is A Great Deal More Mistaken.

Truth Does Not Do As Much Good In The World As Its Imitations Do Harm.

Extreme Boredom Provides Its Own Antidote.

The Vices Enter Into The Composition Of The Virtues, As Poisons Into That Of Medicines. Prudence Collects And Arranges Them, And Uses Them Beneficially Against The Ills Of Life.

Our Virtues Are Often, In Reality, No Better Than Vices Disguised.

We Should Not Be Upset That Others Hide The Truth From Us, When We Hide It So Often From Ourselves.

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