ROCHEFOUCAULD

Absence extinguishes small passions and increases great ones, as the wind will blow out a candle, and blow in a fire.

Conceit causes more conversation than wit.

Happiness lies in the taste, and not in the things; and it is from having what we desire that we are happy--not from ahving what others think desirable.

He who refuses praise the first time that it is offered does so because he would hear it a second time.

How can we expect another to keep our secret if we have been unable to keep it ourselves?

How deceitful hope may be, yet she carries us on pleasantly to the end of life.

How is it that our memory is good enough to retain the least triviality that happens to us, and yet not good enough to recollect how often we have told it to the same person?

However brilliant an action it should not be esteemed great unless the result of a great motive.

It is more shameful to distrust our friends than to be deceived by them.

It's easier to be wise for others than for ourselves.

One of the reasons that we find so few persons rational and agreeable in conversation is that there is hardly a person who does not think more of what he wants to say than of his answer to what is said.

Perfect valor is to do unwitnessed what we should be capable of doing before all the world.

Pride has a greater share than goodness of heart in the remonstrances we make to those who are guilty of faults; we reprove not so much with a view to correct them as to persuade them that we are exempt from those faults ourselves.

Quarrels would not last long if the fault was only on one side.