What men have called friendship is only a social arrangement, a mutual adjustment of interests, an interchange of services given and received; it is, in sum, simply a business from which those involved propose to derive a steady profit for their own self-love.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
There are few people who are more often wrong than those who cannot suffer being wrong.
wrongs people
Love can no more continue without a constant motion than fire can; and when once you take hope and fear away, you take from it its very life and being.
life
Some accidents there are in life that a little folly is necessary to help us out of.
accident life help
We come altogether fresh and raw into the several stages of life, and often find ourselves without experience, despite our years.
life experience
Flattery is a kind of bad money, to which our vanity gives us currency.
money
However greatly we distrust the sincerity of those we converse with, yet still we think they tell more truth to us than to anyone else.
truth
Some counterfeits reproduce so very well the truth that it would be a flaw of judgment not to be deceived by them.
Though men are apt to flatter and exalt themselves with their great achievements, yet these are, in truth, very often owing not so much to design as chance.
chance design men truth
It is not in the power of even the most crafty dissimulation to conceal love long, where it really is, nor to counterfeit it long where it is not.
power
No man deserves to be praised for his goodness, who has it not in his power to be wicked. Goodness without that power is generally nothing more than sloth, or an impotence of will.
man power
The art of using moderate abilities to advantage wins praise, and often acquires more reputation than actual brilliancy.
reputation art
Nature seems at each man's birth to have marked out the bounds of his virtues and vices, and to have determined how good or how wicked that man shall be capable of being.
vices birth virtues man nature
Though nature be ever so generous, yet can she not make a hero alone. Fortune must contribute her part too; and till both concur, the work cannot be perfected.
fortune work nature
friendship men business self
Hope, deceiving as it is, serves at least to lead us to the end of our lives by an agreeable route.
theend
Showing 31 to 45 of 206 results
You must log in to post a comment.
There are no comments yet.