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. -Francois de La Rochefoucauld Great
Flattery is a kind of bad money, to which our vanity gives us currency. -Francois de La Rochefoucauld Money
We have no patience with other people's vanity because it is offensive to our own. -Francois de La Rochefoucauld Patience
Jealousy lives upon doubts. It becomes madness or ceases entirely as soon as we pass from doubt to certainty. -Francois de La Rochefoucauld Jealousy
A true friend is the greatest of all blessings, and that which we take the least care of all to acquire. -Francois de La Rochefoucauld Friendship
If we resist our passions, it is more due to their weakness than our strength. -Francois de La Rochefoucauld Strength
Few people have the wisdom to prefer the criticism that would do them good, to the praise that deceives them. -Francois de La Rochefoucauld Wisdom
He is not to pass for a man of reason who stumbles upon reason by chance but he who knows it and can judge it and has a true taste for it. -Francois de La Rochefoucauld Chance
Hope, deceiving as it is, serves at least to lead us to the end of our lives by an agreeable route. -Francois de La Rochefoucauld Hope
Philosophy finds it an easy matter to vanquish past and future evils, but the present are commonly too hard for it. -Francois de La Rochefoucauld Future
Passion makes idiots of the cleverest men, and makes the biggest idiots clever. -Francois de La Rochefoucauld Men
Heat of blood makes young people change their inclinations often, and habit makes old ones keep to theirs a great while. -Francois de La Rochefoucauld Change
What makes the pain we feel from shame and jealousy so cutting is that vanity can give us no assistance in bearing them. -Francois de La Rochefoucauld Jealousy
In friendship as well as love, ignorance very often contributes more to our happiness than knowledge. -Francois de La Rochefoucauld Friendship
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. -Francois de La Rochefoucauld Business
