Quote collection
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"The grace of novelty and the length of habit, though so very opposite to one another, yet agree in this, that they both alike keepus from discovering the faults of our friends."
"Self-love makes our friends appear more or less deserving in proportion to the delight we take in them, and the measures by whichwe judge of their worth depend upon the manner of their conversing with us."
"As long as we love, we can forgive."
"The vices enter into the composition of the virtues, as poisons into that of medicines. Prudence collects and arranges them, and uses them beneficially against the ills of life."
"It may be said that the vices await us in the journey of life like hosts with whom we must successively lodge; and I doubt whether experience would make us avoid them if we were to travel the same road a second time."
"Kings do with men as with pieces of money; they give them what value they please, and we are obliged to receive them at their current and not at their real value."
"Whatever discoveries we may have made in the regions of self-love, there still remain many unknown lands."
"Self-love, as it happens to be well or ill conducted, constitutes virtue and vice."
"Nothing is so capable of diminishing self-love as the observation that we disapprove at one time what we approve at another."
"Prudence and love are inconsistent; in proportion as the last increases, the other decreases."
"Pity is a sense of our own misfortunes in those of another man; it is a sort of foresight of the disasters which may befall ourselves. We assist others,, in order that they may assist us on like occasions; so that the services we offer to the unfortunate are in reality so many anticipated kindnesses to ourselves."
"In misfortune we often mistake dejection for constancy; we bear it without daring to look on it; like cowards, who suffer themselves to be murdered without resistance."
"There are several remedies which will cure love, but there are no infallible ones."
"One honor won is a surety for more."
"All who know their own minds know not their own hearts."
"Self-love is the love of a man's own self, and of everything else for his own sake. It makes people idolaters to themselves, and tyrants to all the world besides."
"When we seek reconciliation with our enemies, it is commonly out of a desire to better our own condition, a being harassed and tired out with a state of war, and a fear of some ill accident which we are willing to prevent."
"The reason why lovers are never bored together is that they are always talking of themselves."
"There are heroes of wickedness, as there are of goodness."
"Humility is the sure evidence of Christian virtues. Without it, we retain all our faults still, and they are only covered over with pride, which hides them from other men's observation, and sometimes from our own too."