Francois de La Rochefoucauld

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

"Taste may change, but inclination never."

"If we have not peace within ourselves, it is in vain to seek it from outward sources."

"If we resist our passions, it is more due to their weakness than our strength."

"It is almost always a fault of one who loves not to realize when he ceases to be loved."

"Men give away nothing so liberally as their advice."

"Neither the sun nor death can be looked at with a steady eye."

"One can find women who have never had one love affair, but it is rare indeed to find any who have had only one."

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

"Perfect courage is to do without witnesses what one would be capable of doing with the world looking on."

"There are few virtuous women who are not bored with their trade."

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

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

"Though men are apt to flatter and exalt themselves with their great achievements, yet these are, in truth, very often owing not so much to design as chance."

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

"We all have enough strength to endure the misfortunes of others."

"We have no patience with other people's vanity because it is offensive to our own."

"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."