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48.—Happiness is in the taste, and not in the things themselves; we are happy from possessing what we like, not from possessing what others like.
159.—It is not enough to have great qualities, we should also have the management of them.
165.—Ability wins us the esteem of the true men, luck that of the people.
168.—However deceitful hope may be, yet she carries us on pleasantly to the end of life. ["Hope travels through, nor quits us when we die." Pope: Essay On Man, Ep. ii.]
171.—As rivers are lost in the sea so are
virtues in self.
180.—Our repentance is not so much sorrow for the ill we have done as fear of the ill that may happen to us.
190.—Great men should not have great faults.
193.—There are relapses in the diseases of the mind as in those of the body; what we call a cure is often no more than an intermission or change of disease.
202.—Falsely honest men are those who disguise their faults both to themselves and others; truly honest men are those who know them perfectly and confess them.
212.—Most people judge men only by success or by fortune.
216.—Perfect valour is to do without witnesses what one would do before all the world.
217.—Intrepidity is an extraordinary strength of soul which raises it above the troubles, disorders, and emotions which the sight of great perils can arouse in it: by this strength heroes maintain a calm aspect and preserve their reason and liberty in the most surprising and terrible accidents.
259.—The pleasure of love is in loving, we are happier in the passion we feel than in that we inspire.
266.—We deceive ourselves if we believe that there are violent passions like ambition and love that can triumph over others. Idleness, languishing as she is, does not often fail in being mistress; she usurps authority over all the plans and actions of life; imperceptibly consuming and destroying both passions and virtues.
267.—A quickness in believing evil without having sufficiently examined it, is the effect of pride and laziness. We wish to find the guilty, and we do not wish to trouble ourselves in examining the crime.
276.—Absence extinguishes small passions and increases great ones, as the
286.—It is impossible to love a second time those whom we have really ceased to love.
342.—The accent of our native country dwells in the heart and mind as well as on the tongue.
352.—We almost always are bored with persons with whom we should not be bored.
357.—Little minds are too much wounded by little things; great minds see all and are not even hurt.
375.—Ordinary men commonly condemn what is beyond them.
376.—Envy is destroyed by true friendship, flirtation by true love.
380.—Fortune makes visible our virtues or our vices, as light does objects.
396.—We keep our first lover for a long time—if we do not get a second.
Idiots and lunatics see only their own wit.
All passions make us commit some faults, love alone makes us ridiculous.
Few know how to be old.
Women who love, pardon more readily great indiscretions than little infidelities.
Luck and temper rule the world.
It is far easier to know men than to know man.
We should not judge of a man's merit by his great abilities, but by the...
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We should earnestly desire but few things if we clearly knew what we desired.
Those who have experienced a great passion neglect friendship, and those who have united themselves to friendship have nought to do with love."—La Bruyère. Du Coeur.]
We try to make a virtue of vices we are loth to correct.
Weakness is more hostile to virtue than vice.
In great matters we should not try so much to create opportunities as to utilise those that offer themselves.
"A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds."—Essays,
We should gain more by letting the world see what we are than by trying to seem what we are not.
There exists an excess of good and evil which surpasses our comprehension.
In their first passion women love their lovers, in all the others they love love.
"We truly love once, the first time; the subsequent passions are more or less involuntary." La Bruyère: Du Coeur.]
However rare true love is, true friendship is rarer.
It is only people who possess firmness who can possess true gentleness. In those who appear gentle it is generally only weakness, which is readily converted into harshness.
Nothing is rarer than true good nature, those who think they have it are generally only pliant or weak.
When we are tired of loving we are quite content if our mistress should become faithless, to loose us from our fidelity.
How shall we hope that another person will keep our secret if we do not keep it ourselves.
Sobriety is the love of health, or an incapacity to eat much.
The praise bestowed upon us is at least useful in rooting us in the practice of virtue.
The pomp of funerals concerns rather the vanity of the living, than the honour of the dead. (1665, No. 213.)
