"We frequently are troublesome to others, when we think it impossible for us ever to be so."
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Francois de La Rochefoucauld quotes (page 36 of 55)
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"That which occasions so many mistakes in the computations of men, when they expect return for favors, is that the giver's pride and the receiver's cannot agree upon the value of the kindness done."
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"Perseverance is neither praiseworthy nor blameworthy; for it seems to be only the enduring of certain inclinations and opinions which men neither give themselves nor take away from themselves."
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"He who refuses praise the first time that it is offered does so because he would hear it a second time."
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"Absence abates a moderate passion and intensifies a great one - as the wind blows out a candle but fans fire into flame."
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"We are always bored by the very people by whom it is vital not to be bored."
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"The temperament that produces a talent for little things is the opposite of that required for great ones."
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"We are almost always bored by just those whom we must not find boring."
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"Extreme boredom provides its own antidote."
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"Passion often makes fools of the wisest men and gives the silliest wisdom."
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"The measure of great men should always be measured by the means they have used to acquire it."
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"If we did not have pride, we would not complain of it in others."
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"It is a mighty error to suppose that none but violent and strong passions, such as love and ambition, are able to vanquish the rest. Even idleness, as feeble and languishing as it is, sometimes reigns over them; it usurps the throne and sits paramount over all the designs and actions of our lives, and imperceptibly wastes and destroys all our passions and all our virtues."
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"Criticism sometimes is really praise, and praise sometimes slander."
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"We often make use of envenomed praise, that reveals on the rebound, as it were, defects in those praised which we dare not exposeany other way."
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"In growing old, we become more foolish - and more wise."
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"Nothing is given so profusely as advice."
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"A man is perhaps ungrateful, but often less chargeable with ingratitude than his benefactor is."
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"The caprice of our temper is even more whimsical than that of Fortune."
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"The daily employment of cunning marks a little mind, it generally happens that those who resort to it in one respect to protect themselves lay themselves open to attack in another."
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