Jealousy is not love, but self-love.

The wind which snuffs the candle fans the fire.

A work can become modern only if it is first postmodern. Postmodernism thus understood is not modernism at its end but in the nascent state, and this state is constant.

A woman is faithful to her first lover for a long time – unless she happens to take a second.

The simplest man with passion will be more persuasive than the most eloquent without.

Renewed friendships require more care than those that have never been broken.

Passions often produce their contraries: avarice sometimes leads to prodigality, and prodigality to avarice; we are often obstinate through weakness and daring through timidity.

Jealousy lives upon doubts. It becomes madness or ceases entirely as soon as we pass from doubt to certainty.

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.

Familiarity is a suspension of almost all the laws of civility, which libertinism has introduced into society under the notion of ease.

It is a wearisome disease to preserve health by too strict a regimen.

All our qualities, whether good or bad, are unstable and ambiguous, and almost all are at the mery of chance.

Good advice is something a man gives when he is too old to set a bad example.

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.

Misers mistake gold for their good; whereas ’tis only a means of attaining it.

We often boast that we are never bored; but yet we are so conceited that we do not perceive how often we bore others.

We may say of agreeableness, as distinct from beauty, that it is a symmetry whose rules are unknown.

There are a great many simpletons who know themselves to be so, and who make a very cunning use of their own simplicity.

Luxury and excessive refinement are sure forerunners of the decadence of states, because when all individuals seek their own interests they neglect the public weal.

Coquetry is the essential characteristic, and the prevalent humor of women; but they do not all practice it, because the coquetry of some is restrained by fear or by reason.

What makes lovers never tire of one another is that they talk always about themselves.

Before we set our hearts too much upon anything, let us examine how happy they are, who already possess it.

The principal point of cleverness is to know how to value things just as they deserve.

In friendship as well as love, ignorance very often contributes more to our happiness than knowledge.

Nature creates ability; luck provides it with opportunity.

It is the habit of mediocre minds to condemn all that is beyond their grasp.

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.

Passion makes idiots of the cleverest men, and makes the biggest idiots clever.

The world more often rewards the appearances of merit than merit itself.

Happiness is in the taste, and not in the things themselves; we are happy from possessing what we like, not from possessing what others like.

Few things are needed to make a wise man happy; nothing can make a fool content; that is why most men are miserable.

He who lives without folly isn’t so wise as he thinks.

How deceitful hope may be, yet she carries us on pleasantly to the end of life.

Weakness of character is the only defect which cannot be amended.

Youth is a perpetual intoxication; it is a fever of the mind.

Happiness does not consist in things themselves but in the relish we have of them; and a man has attained it when he enjoys what he loves and desires himself, and not what other people think lovely and desirable.

True eloquence consists in saying all that should be said, and that only.

In the misfortunes of our best friends we always find something not altogether displeasing to us.

As one grows older, one becomes wiser and more foolish.

We have more ability than will power, and it is often an excuse to ourselves that we imagine that things are impossible.

Narrow minds think nothing right that is above their own capacity.

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.

A fashionable woman is always in love – with herself.

One thing which makes us find so few people who appear reasonable and agreeable in conversation is, that there is scarcely any one who does not think more of what he is about to say than of answering precisely what is said to him.

When we disclaim praise, it is only showing our desire to be praised a second time.

Before we passionately desire a thing, we should examine the happiness of its possessor.

A man’s happiness or unhappiness depends as much on his temperament as on his destiny.

Women find it far more difficult to overcome their inclination to coquetry than to overcome their love.

Sometimes we think we dislike flattery, but it is only the way it is done that we dislike.

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.

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.

The accent of one’s birthplace remains in the mind and in the heart as in one’s speech.

True bravery is shown by performing without witness what one might be capable of doing before all the world.

Sometimes in life situations develop that only the half-crazy can get out of.

One forgives to the degree that one loves.

A true friend is the greatest of all blessings, and that which we take the least care of all to acquire.

To know how to hide one’s ability is great skill.

Death and the sun are not to be looked at steadily.

None deserve praise for being good who have not the spirit to be bad: goodness, for the most part, is nothing but indolence or weakness of will.

Loyalty is in most people only a ruse used by self-interest to attract confidence.

We are never so happy, nor so unhappy, as we suppose ourselves to be.

Marriage is the only war in which you sleep with the enemy.

To achieve greatness one should live as if they will never die.

The greatest of all gifts is the power to estimate things at their true worth.

We are very far from always knowing our own wishes.

We never desire strongly, what we desire rationally.

Strength and weakness of mind are misnomers; they are really nothing but the good or bad health of our bodily organs.

Hatred is stronger than friendship.

The best way to rise in society is to use all possible means of persuading people that one has already risen in society.

Some weak people are so sensible of their weakness as to be able to make a good use of it.

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

Whatever ignominy or disgrace we have incurred, it is almost always in our power to reestablish our reputation.

The more we love, the nearer we are to hate.

Perfect Valor is to do, without a witness, all that we could do before the whole world.

The sure way to be cheated is to think one’s self more cunning than others.

We only confess our little faults to persuade people that we have no big ones.

The old begin to complain of the conduct of the young when they themselves are no longer able to set a bad example.

How can we expect another to keep our secret if we have been unable to keep it ourselves?

It requires greater virtues to support good fortune than bad.

Hypocrisy is the homage vice pays to virtue.

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.

There is only one kind of love, but there are a thousand imitations.

Weak people cannot be sincere.

We are more interested in making others believe we are happy than in trying to be happy ourselves.

The passions are the only orators that always persuade: they are, as it were, a natural art, the rules of which are infallible; and the simplest man with passion is more persuasive than the most eloquent without it.

The duration of our passions is no more dependent on ourselves than the duration of our lives.

Man only blames himself in order that he may be praised.

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.

A well-trained mind has less difficulty in submitting to than in guiding an ill-trained mind.

Most men, like plants, possess hidden qualities which chance discovers.

Old age is a tyrant, who forbids, under pain of death, the pleasures of youth.

We forgive so long as we love.

Our minds are lazier than our bodies.

One cannot answer for his courage when he has never been in danger.

Self-interest makes some people blind, and others sharp-sighted.

Sincerity is an openness of heart; we find it in very few people; what we usually see is only an artful dissimulation to win the confidence of others.

Humility is the worst form of conceit.

We think very few people sensible, except those who are of our opinion.

The strongest symptom of wisdom in man is his being sensible of his own follies.

We are never so generous as when giving advice.

Most of our faults are more pardonable than the means we use to conceal them.

It is no tragedy to do ungrateful people favors, but it is unbearable to be indebted to a scoundrel.

Nothing is so contagious as example.

Nothing is rarer than real goodness.

We rarely think people have good sense unless they agree with us.

As we grow older we grow both more foolish and wiser at the same time.

It is easier to be wise for others than for ourselves.

If we are incapable of finding peace in ourselves, it is pointless to search elsewhere.

We promise according to our hopes and perform according to our fears.

No persons are more frequently wrong, than those who will not admit they are wrong.

You are never so easily fooled as when trying to fool someone else.

There are some people who would never have fallen in love if they had not heard there was such a thing.

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.

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

To listen closely and reply well is the highest perfection we are able to attain in the art of conversation.

Mediocre minds usually dismiss anything which reaches beyond their own understanding.

We are so accustomed to disguise ourselves to others, that in the end, we become disguised to ourselves.

Hope is the last thing that dies in man.

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

To eat is a necessity, but to eat intelligently is an art.

The only thing constant in life is change.