"A man for whom accident discovers sense, is not a rational being. A man only is so who understands, who distinguishes, who tests it."
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Francois de La Rochefoucauld quotes (page 54 of 55)
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"Men and things have each their proper perspective; to judge rightly of some it is necessary to see them near, of others we can never judge rightly but at a distance."
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"Everyone praises his heart, none dare praise their understanding."
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"We are deceived if we think that mind and judgment are two different matters: judgment is but the extent of the light of the mind. This light penetrates to the bottom of matters; it remarks all that can be remarked, and perceives what appears imperceptible. Therefore we must agree that it is the extent of the light in the mind that produces all the effects which we attribute to judgment."
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"The contempt of riches in philosophers was only a hidden desire to avenge their merit upon the injustice of fortune, by despising the very goods of which fortune had deprived them; it was a secret to guard themselves against the degradation of poverty, it was a back way by which to arrive at that distinction which they could not gain by riches."
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"We have not enough strength to follow all our reason."
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"Pride indemnifies itself and loses nothing even when it casts away vanity."
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"When great men permit themselves to be cast down by the continuance of misfortune, they show us that they were only sustained by ambition, and not by their mind; so that PLUS a great vanity, heroes are made like other men."
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"Those who are condemned to death affect sometimes a constancy and contempt for death which is only the fear of facing it; so that one may say that this constancy and contempt are to their mind what the bandage is to their eyes."
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"It is oftener by the estimation of our own feelings that we exaggerate the good qualities of others than by their merit, and when we praise them we wish to attract their praise."
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"The most clever and polite are content with only seeming attentive while we perceive in their mind and eyes that at the very time they are wandering from what is said and desire to return to what they want to say."
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"Unfaithfulness ought to extinguish love, and we should not be jealous when there is reason to be. Only those who give no grounds for jealousy are worthy of it."
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"Even the most disinterested love is, after all, but a kind of bargain, in which self-love always proposes to be the gainer one wayor another."
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"There is a sort of love whose very excessiveness prevents the lover's being jealous."
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"The same strength of character which helps a man resist love, helps to make it more violent and lasting too. People of unsettled minds are always driven about with passions, but never absolutely filled with any."
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"The passions do very often give birth to others of a nature most contrary to their own. Thus avarice sometimes brings forth prodigality, and prodigality avarice; a man's resolution is very often the effect of levity, and his boldness that of cowardice and fear."
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"The heart of man ever finds a constant succession of passions, so that the destroying and pulling down of one proves generally tobe nothing else but the production and the setting up of another."
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"The largest ambition has the least appearance of ambition when it meets with an absolute impossibility in compassing its object."
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"Everyone blames his memory, no one blames his judgment."
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"There is real love just as there are real ghosts; every person speaks of it, few persons have seen it."
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