"Happy people rarely correct their faults; they consider themselves vindicated, since fortune endorses their evil ways."
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Francois de La Rochefoucauld quotes (page 46 of 55)
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"However great the advantages given us by nature, it is not she alone, but fortune with her, which makes heroes."
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"We are better pleased to see those on whom we confer benefits than those from whom we receive them."
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"Friendship is only a reciprocal conciliation of interests, and an exchange of good offices; it is a species of commerce out of which self-love always expects to gain something."
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"The greater part of mankind judge of men only by their fashionableness or their fortune."
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"Fortune never appears so blind as to those to whom she does no good."
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"Fortunate persons hardly ever amend their ways: they always imagine that they are in the right when fortune upholds their bad conduct."
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"Perfect courage and utter cowardice are two extremes which rarely occur."
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"Nothing ought more to humiliate men who have merited great praise than the care they still take to boast of little things."
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"Though most of the friendships of the world ill deserve the name of friendships; yet a man may make use of them on occasion, as of a traffic whose returns are uncertain, and in which 'tis usual to be cheated."
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"One of the greatest and also the commonest of faults is for men to believe that, because they never hear their shortcomings spoken of, or read about them in cold print, others can have no knowledge of them. GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG, The Reflections of Lichtenberg We are often more agreeable through our faults than our good qualities."
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"For envy, like lightning, generally strikes at the top Or any point which sticks out from the ordinary level. LUCRETIUS, De Rerum Natura Our envy always outlives the felicity of its object."
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"Those who have the most cunning affect all their lives to condemn cunning; that they may make use of it on some great occasion, and to some great end."
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"The ambitious deceive themselves in proposing an end to their ambition; that end, when attained, becomes a means."
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"Our actions are like blank rhymes, to which everyone applies what sense he pleases."
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"It requires no small degree of ability to know when to conceal one's ability."
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"We endeavor to make a virtue of the faults we are unwilling to correct."
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"However evil men may be they dare not be openly hostile to virtue, and so when they want to attack it they pretend to find it spurious , or impute crimes to it."
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"We feel good and ill only in proportion to our self-love."
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"Affected simplicity is an elegant imposture."
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