"We may say of agreeableness, as distinct from beauty, that it is a symmetry whose rules are unknown."
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Francois de La Rochefoucauld quotes (page 14 of 55)
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"Ordinary men commonly condemn what is beyond them."
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"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."
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"We easily forget crimes that are known to none but ourselves."
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"Our own distrust gives a fair pretence for the knavery of other people."
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"The tranquility or agitation of our temper does not depend so much on the big things which happen to us in life, as on the pleasant or unpleasant arrangements of the little things which happen daily."
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"Nothing is rarer than real goodness."
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"Ridicule dishonors a man more than dishonor does."
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"Female gossips are generally actuated by active ignorance."
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"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."
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"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."
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"We may give advice, but not the sense to use it."
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"The passions are the only orators which always persuade."
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"Perhaps being old is having lighted rooms inside your head, and people in them, acting. People you know, yet can't quite name."
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"The name and pretense of virtue is as serviceable to self-interest as are real vices."
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"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."
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"Jealousy is bred in doubts. When those doubts change into certainties, then the passion either ceases or turns absolute madness."
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"We often do shallow good in order to accomplish evil with impunity."
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"Happiness is in the taste, and not in the things."
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"Listening well and answering well is one of the greatest perfections that can be obtained in conversation."
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