Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Absence diminishes mediocre passions and increases great ones, as the wind extinguishes candles and fans fires.

However rare true love may be it is less so than true friendship.

There is no disguise which can hide love for long where it exists, or simulate it where it does not.

True love is like ghosts which everyone talks about and few have seen.

Everyone complains of his memory and nobody complains of his judgment.

Jealously is always born with love, but it does not die with it.

There is a kind of elevation which does not depend on fortune, it is a certain air which distinguishes us and seems to destine us for great things, it is a price which we imperceptibly set upon ourselves.

Why is it that our memory is good enough to retain the least triviality that happens to us, and yet not good enough to recollect how often we have told it to the same person?

Conceit causes more conversation than wit.

I have always been an admirer. I regard the gift of admiration as indispensable if one is to amount to something, I don't know where I would be without it.

Jealousy contains more of self-love than of love.

We are sometimes as different from ourselves as we are from others.

A refusal of praise is a desire to be praised twice.

A great many men's gratitude is nothing but a secret desire to hook in more valuable kindnesses hereafter.

Few people have the wisdom to prefer the criticism that would do them good to the praise that deceives them.

Being a blockhead is sometimes the best security against being cheated by a man of wit.

We are nearer loving those who hate us than those who love us more than we wish.

People always complain about their memories, never about their minds.

Hope, deceiving as it is, serves at least to lead us to the end of our lives by an agreeable route.

There are bad people who would be less dangerous if they were quite devoid of goodness.