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When You Plant A Seed Of Love, It Is You That Blossoms. Ma Jaya Sati Bhagavati The 11 Karmic Spaces: Choosing Freedom From The Patterns That Bind You There Are Two Kinds Of Faithfulness In Love: One Is Based On Forever Finding New Things To Love In The Loved One; The Other Is Based On Our Pride In Being Faithful.

-Francois De La Rochefoucauld

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When You Plant A

Francois De La Rochefoucauld

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When You Plant A Seed Of Love, It Is You That Blossoms. Ma Jaya Sati Bhagavati The 11 Karmic Spaces: Choosing Freedom From The Patterns That Bind You There Are Two Kinds Of Faithfulness In Love: One Is Based On Forever Finding New Things To Love In The Loved One; The Other Is Based On Our Pride In Being Faithful.

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More From Francois De La Rochefoucauld

It Is Impossible To Love A Second Time What We Have Really Ceased To Love.

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

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.

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.

A Man Often Imagines That He Acts, When He Is Acted Upon.

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.

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.

What Makes False Reckoning, As Regards Gratitude, Is That The Pride Of The Giver And The Receiver Cannot Agree As To The Value Of The Benefit.

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.

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

It Is Sometimes A Point Of As Much Cleverness To Know To Make Good Use Of Advice From Others As To Be Able Give Good Advice To Oneself.

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.

Ability Wins Us The Esteem Of The True Men; Luck, That Of The People.

There Are Some Disguised Falsehoods So Like Truths, That 'twould Be To Judge Ill Not To Be Deceived By Them.

Love, All Agreeable As It Is, Charms More By The Fashion In Which It Displays Itself, Than By Its Own True Merit.

The Evil That We Do Does Not Attract To Us So Much Persecution And Hatred As Our Good Qualities.

However Rare True Love May Be, It Is Less So Than True Friendship.

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

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.

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.

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

Considering How Little The Beginning Or The Ceasing To Love Is In Our Own Power, It Is Foolish And Unreasonable For The Lover Or His Mistress To Complain Of One Another's Inconstancy.

One Forgives To The Degree That One Loves.

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

The More One Loves A Mistress, The More One Is Ready To Hate Her.

Whatever Distrust We May Have Of The Sincerity Of Those Who Converse With Us, We Always Believe They Will Tell Us More Truth Than They Do To Others.

We Come Altogether Fresh And Raw Into The Several Stages Of Life, And Often Find Ourselves Without Experience, Despite Our Years.

Misers Mistake Gold For Their Good; Whereas 'tis Only A Means Of Attaining It.

Fancy Sets The Value On The Gifts Of Fortune.

We Often Persuade Ourselves To Love People Who Are More Powerful Than We Are, Yet Interest Alone Produces Our Friendship; We Do Not Give Our Hearts Away For The Good We Wish To Do, But For That We Expect To Receive.

We Exaggerate The Glory Of Some Men In Order To Detract From That Of Others.

Civility Is A Desire To Receive Civilities, And To Be Accounted Well-bred.

The Secret Of Pleasing In Conversation Is Not To Explain Too Much Everything; To Say Them Half And Leave A Little For Divination Is A Mark Of The Good Opinion We Have Of Others, And Nothing Flatters Their Self-love More.

Too Great Refinement Is False Delicacy, And True Delicacy Is Solid Refinement.

Men Frequently Do Good Only To Give Themselves Opportunity Of Doing Ill With Impunity.

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

Fortune And Humor Govern The World.

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

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

What Makes Us So Bitter Against People Who Outwit Us Is That They Think Themselves Cleverer Than We Are.

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

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

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

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

It Is As Easy To Deceive One's Self Without Perceiving It, As It Is Difficult To Deceive Others Without Their Finding Out.

Tastes In Young People Are Changed By Natural Impetuosity, And In The Aged Are Preserved By Habit.

We Are Never So Happy, Nor So Unhappy, As We Suppose Ourselves To Be.

Unfaithfulness Ought To Extinguish Love, And We Should Not Be Jealous When There Is Reason To Be. Only Those Who Give No Grounds For Jealousy Are Worthy Of It.

We Are Lazier In Our Minds Than In Our Bodies.

Some Weak People Are So Sensible Of Their Weakness As To Be Able To Make A Good Use Of It.

The Reason Why So Few People Are Agreeable In Conversation Is That Each Is Thinking More About What He Intends To Say Than Others Are Saying.

Listening To Others

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

We Often Bore Others When We Think We Cannot Possibly Bore Them.

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

The Only Security Is Courage.

We Should Not Judge A Man's Merits By His Great Qualities, But By The Use He Makes Of Them.

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

The Most Brilliant Fortunes Are Often Not Worth The Littleness Required To Gain Them.

Hope And Fear Are Inseparable. There Is No Hope Without Fear, Nor Any Fear Without Hope.

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.

If One Judges Love By The Majority Of Its Effects, It Is More Like Hatred Than Like Friendship.

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.

Nothing Is Rarer Than Real Goodness.

Raillery Is More Insupportable Than Wrong; Because We Have A Right To Resent Injuries, But Are Ridiculous In Being Angry At A Jest.

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

Hope And Fear Are Inseparable.

A Resolution Never To Deceive Exposes A Man To Be Often Deceived.

It Is Almost Always A Fault Of One Who Loves Not To Realize When He Ceases To Be Loved.

There Are Certain Defects Which, Well-mounted, Glitter Like Virtue Itself.

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.

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

Good Advice Is Something A Man Gives When He Is Too Old To Set A Bad Example.

Our Own Distrust Gives A Fair Pretence For The Knavery Of Other People.

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

All Women Seem By Nature To Be Coquettes.

The Love Of New Acquaintance Comes Not So Much From Being Weary Of What We Had Before, Or From Any Satisfaction There Is In Change, As From The Distaste We Feel In Being Too Little Admired By Those That Know Us Too Well, And The Hope Of Being More Admired By Those That Know Us Less.

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.

A Fool Has Not Stuff Enough To Make A Good Man.

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

The Moderation Of People In Prosperity Is The Effect Of A Smooth And Composed Temper, Owing To The Calm Of Their Good Fortune.

The Heart Of Man Ever Finds A Constant Succession Of Passions, So That The Destroying And Pulling Down Of One Proves Generally Tobe Nothing Else But The Production And The Setting Up Of Another.

When Great Men Permit Themselves To Be Cast Down By The Continuance Of Misfortune, They Show Us That They Were Only Sustained By Ambition, And Not By Their Mind; So That Plus A Great Vanity, Heroes Are Made Like Other Men.

One Kind Of Flirtation Is To Boast We Never Flirt.

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.

It Often Happens That Things Come Into The Mind In A More Finished Form Than Could Have Been Achieved After Much Study.

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

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.

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

Honest People Will Respect Us For Our Merit: The Public, For Our Luck.

Men Are Inconsolable Concerning The Treachery Of Their Friends Or The Deceptions Of Their Enemies; And Yet They Are Often Very Highly Satisfied To Be Both Deceived And Betrayed By Their Own Selves.

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.

To Establish Oneself In The World, One Does All One Can To Seem Established There Already.

Fortune Cures Us Of Many Faults That Reason Could Not.

A Clever Man Reaps Some Benefit From The Worst Catastrophe, And A Fool Can Turn Even Good Luck To His Disadvantage.

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

One Can Find Women Who Have Never Had One Love Affair, But It Is Rare Indeed To Find Any Who Have Had Only One.

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

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.

Constancy In Love ... Is Only Inconstancy Confined To One Object.

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

Gratitude Is A Lively Sense Of Benefits To Come.

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

Jealousy Contains More Of Self-love Than Of Love.

No Fools Are So Difficult To Manage As Those With Some Brains.

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

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

Were We Not Proud Ourselves, We Should Not Complain Of The Pride Of Others.

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

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

Affected Simplicity Is An Elegant Imposture.

Idleness Is More An Infirmity Of The Mind Than Of The Body.

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

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

A Man Is Perhaps Ungrateful, But Often Less Chargeable With Ingratitude Than His Benefactor Is.

Silence Is The Safest Policy If You Are Unsure Of Yourself.

People That Are Conceited Of Their Own Merit Take Pride In Being Unfortunate, That Themselves And Others May Think Them Considerable Enough To Be The Envy And The Mark Of Fortune.

Great Men's Honor Ought Always To Be Measured By The Methods They Made Use Of In Attaining It.

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.

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

When Our Vices Leave Us, We Like To Imagine It Is We Who Are Leaving Them.

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.

Propriety Is The Least Of All Laws, And The Most Observed.

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

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

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.

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

There Are Few Things We Should Keenly Desire If We Really Knew What We Wanted.

There Are Certain People Fated To Be Fools; They Not Only Commit Follies By Choice, But Are Even Constrained To Do So By Fortune.

Of All Our Faults, The One We Avow Most Easily Is Idleness; We Persuade Ourselves That It Is Allied To All The Peaceable Virtues,and As For The Others, That It Does Not Destroy Them Utterly, But Only Suspends The Exercise Of Their Functions.

In Love Deceit Nearly Always Goes Further Than Mistrust.

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

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.

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

Nothing Is So Catching As Example.

Sometimes A Fool Has Talent, But Never Judgment.

The Happiness And Misery Of Men Depend No Less On Temper Than Fortune.

It Is The Habit Of Mediocre Minds To Condemn All That Is Beyond Their Grasp.

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

Many People Despise Wealth, But Few Know How To Give It Away.

There Are Reproaches Which Praise, And Praises Which Defame.

Some Reproaches Praise; Some Praises Reproach.

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

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

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.

The Heat Of Youth Is Not More Opposed To Safety Than The Coldness Of Age.

We Easily Forget Crimes That Are Known To None But Ourselves.

The Exceeding Delight We Take In Talking About Ourselves Should Give Us Cause To Fear That We Are Giving But Very Little Pleasureto Our Listeners.

Only The Contemptible Fear Contempt.

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

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.

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

Prudence And Love Are Inconsistent; In Proportion As The Last Increases, The Other Decreases.

The Wind Which Snuffs The Candle Fans The Fire.

Cunning And Treachery Are The Offspring Of Incapacity.

Avarice Often Produces Opposite Results: There Are An Infinite Number Of Persons Who Sacrifice Their Property To Doubtful And Distant Expectations; Others Mistake Great Future Advantages For Small Present Interests.

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

True Friendship Destroys Envy, And True Love Destroys Coquetterie.

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

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

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

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.

We Can Never Be Certain Of Our Courage Until We Have Faced Danger.

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

Instead Of Considering That The Worst Way To Persuade Or Please Others Is To Try Thus Strongly To Please Ourselves, And That To Listen Well And To Answer Well Are Some Of The Greatest Charms We Can Have In Conversation.

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.

Humility Is The Worst Form Of Conceit.

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

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

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.

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

Deceiving Others

We Speak Little If Not Egged On By Vanity.

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

That Which Occasions So Many Mistakes In The Computations Of Men, When They Expect Return For Favors, Is That The Giver's Pride And The Receiver's Cannot Agree Upon The Value Of The Kindness Done.

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

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.

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

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

The Older A Fool Is, The Worse He Is.

Fortune Makes Our Virtues And Vices Visible, Just As Light Does The Objects Of Sight.

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.

We Are Much Harder On People Who Betray Us In Small Ways Than On People Who Betray Others In Great Ones.

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

Few Things Are Impossible In Themselves: Application To Make Them Succeed Fails Us More Often Than The Means.

The Generality Of Men Have, Like Plants, Latent Properties, Which Chance Brings To Light.

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

We Are Eager To Believe That Others Are Flawed Because We Are Eager To Believe In What We Wish For.

That Conduct Often Seems Ridiculous The Secret Reasons Of Which Are Wise And Solid.

When We Exaggerate Our Friends' Tenderness Towards Us, It Is Often Less From Gratitude Than From A Desire To Exhibit Our Own Virtue.

Wisdom Is The Mind What Health Is To The Body.

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.

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

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

What Is Perfectly True Is Perfectly Witty.

We Should Wish For Few Things With Eagerness, If We Perfectly Knew The Nature Of That Which Was The Object Of Our Desire.

The Reason That Lovers Never Weary Each Other Is Because They Are Always Talking About Themselves.

Politeness Of The Mind Is To Have Delicate Thoughts

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

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

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